It’s been a busy day, what with iPhone pre-orders and…er…complaining about iPhone pre-orders. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t fill you in on some of the other news stories that may have slipped through the cracks.
View full post on Macworld

A member over at Howard Forums uncovered an interesting bit of info when attempting to benchmark his [overclocked] Droid using Quadrant (find it free in the market). Sitting just below a Nexus One running Android 2.2 and above the Samsung Galaxy S was a device listed as the Shadow MB810. That would be the Motorola Shadow (or whatever it ends up being called). Just to be sure I double checked and sure enough there it was. (Quadrant pools data from users for comparisons, so one of the few to currently have the Shadow in the wild must have ran a previous test).

What does the result tell us? Well simply, that the phone is pretty fast. The interesting thing is that we have every indication that the version of the Shadow that has been kicking around for its current round of testing is running on Android 2.1. If you look at the jump between the Nexus One running Android 2.1 and the N1 with Android 2.2 and the JIT compiler, you’ll have to get excited about the prospect of the Shadow running Android 2.2

Then again, the Shadow that was tested may have already been upgraded to Android 2.2, based on the suggestion that the PowerVR SGX 530 GPU in the OMAP 3630 supposedly found in the Shadow wouldn’t best the PowerVR SGX 540 GPU in the Galaxy S head-to-head on Android 2.1.

No matter what it’s a win/win. The Shadow will either come with Froyo out of the box (likely) or it will be even more insanely fast once it does get the Froyo update.

For a comparison between the OMAP 3430 processor of the Droid and the (rumored) OMAP 3630 of the Shadow, see the video below:

[via AlienBabelTech]

View full post on Android Phone Fans

So I’ve finally got my phone back from T-Mobile. It has been repaired perfectly. However, after rooting, flashing CM5, and running my usual Titanium Backup restore, when I went to download any updates for my apps, this is what I was presented with.

Yes. I had almost three full ‘pages’, as it were, of available updates (on a G1 screen). And I now have to update each one of them manually. This may take a long time, and as much as I hate to admit it, the fact that an ‘Update All’ button, which the iPhone has had since the App Store was first launched, is only coming to Android in 2.2 (almost 2 years after the first Android device was first released) really doesn’t reflect well on Google. But the fact that Froyo will have such a button is at least something…I guess. Sorry Google, but until Froyo is released, this is an area where Apple has the 1-up.

View full post on AndroidSPIN | Your No.1 source for Android news.

jMonkeyEngine, the developers of they claimed to be “the most powerful Android game engine to date” are looking for the best of the best to join their team.

We are gearing up towards the alpha release of our new engine. We feel this is the right time to up the emphasis on our Android support, which is currently just in a preliminary state:
http://jmonkeyengine.com/blog/blog/2010/02/10/android-support-confirmed-for-jme3/

We are looking for a savvy developer who might work with us to bring our Android support to a complete state, making jMonkeyEngine 3.0 one of, if not the most powerful Android game engines to date. We feel this is a big opportunity for both us and any prospective developer willing to collaborate. Any which way you could help us promote our call for a developer would be most appreciated.

So if you feel you have what it takes, hit them up and see what happens.

View full post on AndroidSPIN | Your No.1 source for Android news.

Northern Sky Research says satellite services made it through the economic crisis relatively well. Probably one of the biggest success stories of 2009 was satellite broadband access, where NSR noted that North America became the first region to top 1 million subscribers, and Western Europe will likely exceed 100,000 subscribers well before the end of 2010.

The imminent launch of the second generation of high throughput satellites (HTS) like ViaSat-1, KaSat, Jupiter-1 and even Hylas-1, a hybrid Ka Band/Ku Band satellite, will finally change the core economics of satellite broadband access services, says NSR.

ViaSat says their new ViaSat-1 would have more capacity than all current North American satellites combined, and could serve two million subscribers with 10 times the throughput of any other Ka-band satellite. Wild Blue has struggled with having enough capacity to add more customers, and ViaSat’s new satellite should provide the bandwidth to burn.

ViaSat-1 will use Space Systems/Loral’s 1300 platform and high-capacity Ka-band spot beam technology. In many ways it’s similar to Eutelsat’s KaSat, also scheduled for launch in 2010.

Viasat’s strategic partner Eutelsat, in a parallel competition, awarded EADS Astrium a contract to construct the European-based KaSat. It will be positioned at 13° East, Eutelsat’s prime orbital position (above).

A number of national government initiatives to bring broadband to all residences and business. NSR believes that ensuring 100% broadband coverage in any country will almost always include the use of satellite broadband access services as the most economical way to reach the last few percent of households and businesses.

In total, NSR projects that broadband VSAT networking, satellite broadband access, and broadband trunking & backhaul services will generate nearly US$8.8 billion by 2019, which is a 135% increase over 2009. Global satellite broadband access will add the most new revenues, says the research firm, with some US$4.1 billion between 2009 and 2019, to become the leading market segment and bypass traditional broadband VSAT networking in revenue terms as of 2013.

In other satellite news, Intelsat announced today that its Galaxy 15 satellite experienced an anomaly on 5 April 2010. The G-15 satellite, located at 133° West Longitude, primarily provides transmission capacity for cable programmers in North America.

All media traffic on this satellite is planned to be transitioned to Intelsat’s Galaxy 12 satellite, which is the designated in-orbit spare for the North American region. There has been no immediate service interruption and no service interruption is expected for the media customers on this satellite, says Intelsat.

Galaxy 12 is currently relocating to the 133° WL orbital location. Intelsat’s global fleet, the largest of any commercial satellite operator, includes 12 other satellites that serve the continental U.S. region.

Launched in 2005, the Galaxy 15 is one of nine Orbital Sciences spacecraft ordered by Intelsat since 2001 that are either now in orbit or in production for upcoming launches. Intelsat and Orbital Sciences Corporation, the manufacturer of G-15, are conducting a technical investigation with respect to the anomaly.

Galaxy 15 (pdf), launched October 13, 2005, features a unique hybrid payload configuration. In addition to the C-band commercial communications, the spacecraft will also broadcast Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation data using L-band frequencies as part of the Geostationary Communications and Control Segment (GCCS) being implemented by Lockheed Martin for the FAA.

The purpose of GCCS (pdf) is to generate and transmit the WAAS signal in space.

The Wide Area Augmentation System enables increased position accuracy for GPS receivers. GCCS is the GPS-based navigation and landing system for aviation use to provide precision guidance to aircraft at thousands of airports and airstrips where there is currently no precision landing capability. Orbital engineered the payload and integrated it onto the existing Galaxy 15 satellite.

View full post on dailywireless.org

After seeing some potential issues with the Nexus One multitouch, Android and Me has taken some time to visit the topic a bit more in depth. It appears as though the Nexus One touchscreen is not really "broken" like first reported, but more so limited by the hardware. The screen used in the Nexus One, the ClearPad 2000, is indeed designed to handle multitouch functionality, and in many cases like Google Maps, or the gallery, these features work rather well.

The issue appears to become most transparent when third party developers use more complex motions in their games, and the device can simply not keep up. While unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there is an immediate fix for this, besides developers "dumbing" down their games to not include these extreme multitouch needs, we can all hope that HTC will upgrade their choice to the ClearPad 3000. Check out the performance of this screen after the jump. [via Android and Me]

read more

View full post on Android Central