Hulu Plus: Now Available on Android

If you wanted to watch movies or TV shows on your phone, but had an Android device, until recently you were mostly out of luck. Not too long ago, Netflix, the popular paid video streaming service, announced their Android version of their mobile application. Most probably due to issues of video piracy, it was only available on a few Android devices. Now Hulu Plus is following suit.

Hulu.com is a website that allows you to watch clips of movies and TV shows, or even entire movies or TV shows for free. One can also sign up for Hulu Plus, which, at $7.99 per month, brings some more content, as well as allowing users to access Hulu from more devices, instead of just being able to watch from a browser.

Hulu Plus was available for a while on the iPhone, Playstation 3, and XBOX 360, but the latest addition to the app lineup is Hulu Plus for Android. However, like the Netflix app for Android, Hulu Plus for Android is only available on a select six devices, with more devices coming later on. Hulu Plus can be downloaded from the Android Market.

Overall, it's great that Hulu is expanding their application platforms to include Android, but it would be really nice if the app was available on all Android devices, instead of just six. If you are on Android and want to access video content, look into Netflix, as Netflix price is equal to Hulu Plus', and definitely has more content, with no advertising.

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ASUS Announces the Padfone, A Tablet/Phone Combo

For a few days, there has been some rumors and speculation about ASUS' new tablet device, thought to be called the Padfone. All rumors were wither denied or confirmed at today's official unveiling of the Padfone.

The Padfone was announced earlier today during the first day of the Computex exhibition in Taiwan. 

The idea of the Padfone is that it will sell as a tablet/phone combo running Android. When one needs a bigger screen, say, for watching a movie or playing a game, you can just slide the phone into a slot in the back of the tablet, and your screen is suddenly magically bigger.

The tablet also has a bigger battery in it, so when your phone is low on juice, you can just pop it into the back of the tablet, and it will start charging. 

With the Padfone, there is no need to buy a separate data plan for both the phone and tablet, because the tablet can just use the 3G data connection built into the docked phone.

Although it is unclear whether the tablet part of the Padfone will work without the phone docked inside or not, this seems like a pretty cool device. There are no details about pricing or availability, or even specs, which is definitely a setback. Another problem with Android tablets in general is the lack of tablet designed apps, at least with the Padfone, there is a smaller screen device to view phone-optimized apps. 

Below are the two promotional videos that ASUS put out.

HTC Sensation Announced

     Early this morning, HTC held an announcement introducing their latest smartphone. Thanks to some early leaks, we knew a lot about the phone before the official announcement, but something official's always nice, because you don't have to rely on some leaked pictures.

The New HTC Sensation

     HTC had the tech press gather in some venue in London to hear the details about their new phone, the HTC Sensation. Peter Chou, HTC's CEO started the presentation.
     At the beginning of the announcement, just before Peter gave any details about the Sensation, he threw in a quick note that the HTC Flyer, their tablet device, will go on sale May 9th throughout Europe. Peter then went on to give the details about the new smartphone.
     The HTC Sensation will be the first phone with contoured glass along the entire edge of the screen, giving it a really slick and attractive look. It will also have an almost 35 percent higher screen resolution, due to the qHD technologies in the SuperLCD screen.
     The Sensation also comes with a new user interface (UI) on top of Android, which allows you to launch apps directly from the lock screen, just by dragging the icon into the unlock circle. Another nice thing with the new UI is the new animations for the weather widget.
     The new phone also includes a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which allows everything to be pretty much twice as fast as it would be in a single-core smartphone.
     HTC is competing with iTunes, as along with this announcement, they announced a new service called HtC Watch. Watch lets you rent and watch movies from any HTC device, and the HTC Sensation will be the first phone to support it.
     The Senstion will be available through European carriers from June. There is no word on US availability.
      This seems like a great phone for anyone who wants a sleek design along with some great features. The two major setbacks with this announcement are that there is no word on price or US availability.

Boost Mobile Leaks their own Phone: Samsung Galaxy Prevail

     Boost Mobile is a wireless carrier that provides contract-free wireless service for devices such as cell phones. There are a few Boost-like services around, including Cricket Wireless, Virgin Wireless, and MetroPCS. All of these companies have been rushing to get smartphones, because most of the phones were going to the big guys like AT&T or Verizon.
     Boost offers one BlackBerry phone and one two Android phones, one of which they just added today.
     Boost was supposed to hold a big announcement later today that would introduce it's latest phone. It seams they may have leaked the details early, as information about the new Samsung Galaxy Prevail appeared on the Boost website. Samsung makes pretty much one Galaxy phone which they give to all of the carriers with different names, for example Verizon calls their Galaxy phone the Samsung Fascinate.
     The Samsung Galaxy Prevail will be available for online purchase shortly, and will cost $179.99. Boost offers monthly plans for $50 per month, or a daily plan for $2 per month. Both plans come with unlimited talk, text, web, email, and IM. Boost also has an interesting program with it's $50 plan called Shrinkage. Shrinkage lowers your bill more and more the longer you stay with Boost. For example, if you pay on time every month for 18 months, your bill would only be $35 per month instead of $50.
     At $179.99, this is not the cheapest Android phone on the Market, but it is close. One of the major benefits of the Prevail and Boost Mobile is the lack of an annoying two year contract. Unlike Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint, you have no responsibility to keep on paying the $50 per month for two years.

Motorola Xoom WiFi Only Official Dates

     Release dates for the Motorola Xoom WiFi, a 10 inch tablet running Honeycomb, have been leaked for quite a while, but today Motorola made it official. The WiFi only version of the Xoom will hit the shelves on March 27th, about two weeks from now, in seven major retailers. Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, RadioShack, Staples, WalMart, and a few Sam's Club locations will all be getting the WiFi only Xoom on launch date.
     The WiFi only Xoom has the same front and rear facing cameras, dual-core processor, and 10.1 inch screen as it's 3G counterpart. The Xoom is also one of the first tablets to run Honeycomb, which is the latest release of the popular mobile OS Android.
     The WiFi version of the Xoom will be going for $599, with a rumored $50 off at Sam's Club. The Apple iPad, another 10 inch tablet, is closely competing with the Xoom, and only costs $499. Customers who want a tablet would probably go for the iPad, which has a lower price, many more applications, and a few more features, but the more technically savvy might go for the Xoom, because android gives users more control over a lot more.

Android announces Online App Store and More at Today's Event

Android - A mobile operating system run by Google

Honeycomb - The codename for the latest version of Android

Tablet - A touchscreen mobile computer that is usually one piece of hardware

Widget - A small application that runs open in a small area of the screen

     Earlier today, Google hosted an Android event officially showing off Honeycomb, and their online android market. They started off with Honeycomb news, and then went on to announce an online Android Market. Google Android's chief Andy Rubin introduced Hugo Barra, Android head of mobile products, to explain android 3.0, also known as Honeycomb.

Tablet With Honeycomb

     Honeycomb was shown only on a tablet device, so we are yet to know much about how it would work on a phone. Honeycomb completely redesigns the Android interface. 

     The status bar, which tells the time, battery life, connection info, and notifications, has been completely removed from the top of the screen, and replaced by a small black bar at the bottom of the screen. This bar slightly resembles the Windows taskbar. The bar tells a user the time, battery information, notifications, and connectivity info. It also includes a back button, a home button, and a multitasking button. 

     When the multitasking button is tapped, a sidebar appears on the left side of the screen, showing you a visual list with all of the currently running apps. When one of the apps is tapped, it seamlessly opens up into full screen.

Tablet with Andoid 2.2

     Honeycomb also focuses a lot more on not having all your apps in a grid, as seen on the Apple iPhone, previous builds of Android, and many other mobile operating systems. In Honeycomb, a user will put a few important widgets on the homescreen, as well as icons for the few most used apps. The rest of the apps will be accessible through a small button near the upper right corner of the screen. Users also have multiple home screens which they can swipe through, each showing different widgets and app icons.

     Honeycomb also comes with a redesigned notification system. When a notification pops up, it won't be intrusive, it will lay at the bottom right corner of the screen, but will still show some information about the notification.

     Google also included the application bar in Honeycomb. The application bar is a small bar at the top of an application that includes commands for that program. Windows has know this for a long time, as many applications have small bars with commands such as file menu, edit, and more. Android's application bar's commands can also change based on what is happening right now in the app. For example, in an email app, you might get compose message, and some other commands. When you have a message selected, on the other hand, you might see, delete, mark as spam, and more.

      Google also focused on it's powerful graphics and animation capabilities. The demos Google showed were impressive, but something apple devices could do for a long time.

      Google spent half the time talking about Honeycomb, and the other half talking about it's new online app store, known as Android Marketplace. 

      For a long time, one must be connected on his Android Device to download apps from the Marketplace. At today's event, Google announced it's Online App Store. Like Apple's online store, the online app store will allow you to download apps away from your computer, rather than have to buy them through the phone. The app store looks nice, and kind of resembles the app store for Google Chrome.

Android Market Online

     Unfortunately, you cannot download the app on your PC, rather you can only discover them. 

     The app store integrates sharing, and allows you to share an app on Twitter, but is lacking any Facebook integration.

     Overall, Honeycomb looks great, and the online Android store has been widely waited for, and is much more convenient. I'd like to see the ability to download to the PC and then syncing, and some more social integration, including Facebook. 

Watch the announcement here.

Apple Pulling other eReader Apps? (Update: Apple Responds)

Gadgetator's trying a new format for the not so tech savvy readers. At the beginning of each post, we will be writing a list of tech jargon and their definitions that one would need to know at the beginning of the article. Like this idea? Hate it? Please leave a comment with your feedback. Thank you.

eReader-An eReader is a device that allows you to read digital books instead of paper ones.

     Sony makes an eReader called the Sony Reader. As with many eReaders, Sony designed an iPhone app that allowed one to read the eBooks that they downloaded from Sony on their iPhone. This app was rejected by Apple for some unknown reason. 

     Apps are rejected all the time by Apple, but it's always because of a violation of one of Apple's rules. So far the Kindle, the Nook, and many more eReaders have apps on the iPhone that weren't rejected. This could simply be because the Sony app had some problem with the code that went against Apple's rules. It could also be that Apple has changed it's policy and is now not allowing third party eReader apps.

     Apple also has an eReader app called iBooks, which is the reason why one would think that Apple is rejecting other, third party eReader apps, and even may start to pull the old ones.

     According to the New York Times, Apple is changing their policies to no longer allow third party apps to sell content, like eBooks, inside their apps. Now, if you're worrying about games like Farmville, which allows you to buy coins from inside the app for the game, that's nothing to worry about, this does not stop app developers to sell through their apps, rather just requires them to use Apple as an intermediary. 

     The story seems true, as Sony spokesperson Steve Harber is quoted, "“It’s the opposite of what we wanted to bring to the market, we always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store.”

     So what does this mean for other eReader apps? Although the other apps don't have an integrated bookstore, they do allow users to download already purchased content from other devices, something which, according to the New York Times, Apple said was against the rules. This would affect Amazon with it's Kindle and many other popular eBook apps. 

     For now, we'll just have to see what happens. The story seems very believable, and neither Apple, Sony, or Amazon would comment.


UPDATE: Apple responded saying that they had not changed any developer guidelines, but wants a cut of anything sold through their devices.

Samsung Galaxy Player

     For a while, there was no real alternative to the Apple iPod Touch. It was the only MP3 player with a touchscreen that could do everything a smart phone can do. Until now. Samsung recently introduced it's Samsung Galaxy Player 50.

     This media player runs Android 2.1, can access the real Android Market, has built in WiFi, a 3.2 mega-pixel rear facing camera, and integrated GPS. These specs seem great, even better than th iPod Touch, but how can we confirm them. Samsung does not have an official page for the player, unless, of course, you can read Russian. But translating that page with Google Translate really did the job well.
     The price range is reported to be about the price of the iPod Touch, and will come in 8, 16, and 32GB variations. It is available for pre-order from Amazon UK for £149.99, and is not expected in the US until summer.
     The Samsung site gives this device the following specs:


Features

Embedded OS	Android
Version	2.1 (Éclair)

Memory Type	Flash Memory
Built-in memory (GB)	8 / 16 GB
Diagonal screen size, inches	3.2 "
Display Resolution	WQVGA (400x240)
Display	TFT
Battery Type	Lithium-Ion (removable)
Battery Capacity	1000 mAh
Color	white
Wi-Fi support	yes (WiFi: 802.11b/g/n)
Camera	yes (2Mpiks.)
GPS	yes
Bluetooth	yes (3.0)
FM-tyuner/kolichestvo stations in memory	Yes (RDS in Europe and Russia)
USB	yes (2.0)
Built-in speaker	yes
Embedded MIC	yes
microSD Card	yes
Multi Touch	yes
Multi Tasking	yes
Dimmension (WxHxD)	54,20 x 105,50 x 11,08 (mm)
Weight (Including Battery)	84 (city)
Output Power	20 mW.
Etc	-

Audio Playback	30 hours
Video Playback	Up to 5 hours
Etc	-

MP3	MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer3 (8 ~ 48 kHz, up to 320 kbit / c)
WMA	WMA9 Std. (8 ~ 48 kHz, up to 320 kbit / c)
Ogg	Ogg (Q0 ~ Q10)
FLAC	FLAC (Level0 ~ Level8)
AAC	AAC / AAC + / eAAC + (8 ~ 48 kHz, up to 128 kbit / c)
WAV	WAV (8 ~ 48 kHz)
Etc	-

avi	Video Codec	MPEG4, DivX 4/5/6, XviD, H.264 (D1, 720 x 480)
	Audio Codec	MP3, AAC / AAC + / eAAC +
mp4	Video Codec	MPEG4, H.263, H.264 (D1, 720 x 480)
	Audio Codec	AAC / AAC + / eAAC +
3gp	Video Codec	MPEG4, H.263, H.264 (D1, 720 x 480)
	Audio Codec	AMR-NB/WB
wmv	Video Codec	VC1 (WMV9) (D1, 720 x 480)
	Audio Codec	WMV9 Std.
asf	Video Codec	VC1 (WMV9) (D1, 720 x 480)
	Audio Codec	WMV9 Std.
mkv	Video Codec	-
	Audio Codec	-
flv	Video Codec	-
	Audio Codec	-
Etc	-

JPEG	yes
GIF	yes
BMP	yes
PNG	yes
Etc	-

Word File	doc, docx, xml, txt, rtf, dot, dotx
Excel File	xls, xlsx, csv, xlt, xltx
Power Point	ppt, pptx, pot, potx, pps, ppsx
PDF	pdf
Etc	-

SoundAlive	Yes (Basic (Preset Sound Effect), Advanced (User Sound Effect), Auto)
AB Repeat	yes
Changing playback speed	yes
Alarm Music Setting	yes
Lyric	yes
Album	yes
Playlist	yes
Library (Artist, Album, Genre, Title DB sorting)	yes
Etc	-

SoundAlive	yes
Changing playback speed	yes
Bookmarks	yes
Etc	-

Wallpaper Image Setting	yes
Live Wallpaper	No
Font Setting	No
Auto Brightness Control	No
Etc	-

Appendix	※ without Kies, you can use the device
File Delete	yes
File Navigation	yes (in ThinkFree App.)
Etc	-

Security	yes (Screen Unlock Pattern)
Etc	-

Android Market	Search, Gmail (Germany: Google Mail), Contact, Talk, Maps, Youtube, Market and Etc
General Applications	Alarm / Clock, Calendar, Gallery, Email, ThinkFree Office, Memo, Voice Recorder, Calculator, Daily Briefing, Program Explorer, AllShare and Etc
Etc	Embedded applications can be changed

PC OS	WinXP SP2 or later (Vista and Win 7)
USB Connection (MTP / UMS)	yes
Samsung Kies	yes
Etc	-

Type	Transparent
Dimensions for Package W x H x D	148 x 87 x 48 (mm)
Dimensions for Master Carton W x H x D	255 x 188 x 170 (mm)
Shipping weight, was	278 (city)
Weight Master Carton, Mr.	3.02 (kg)

Device	yes
Earphones	yes
USB Cable	yes
Charger	No
Battery (Standard)	yes (1EA)
Quick Guide	yes
Etc	-

     This device overall looks very compelling, especially for the fluent Android user. And since UK will have it January 7th, 2011, we should expect some reviews soon. Also, popular tech writers such as Engadget already have the device, and are posting reviews on it.
     Although the US might not see it for a while, it might be worth waiting for it. Also, if you happen to have a friend in the UK, you could have it shipped to his house and get it from him. So if you are a avid Android user, and are in the market for an iPod Touch-like device, the Samsung Galaxy player 50 might just be the right choice.

For more info see the video below.