android phones

Viber is in the process of bringing their free calling and messaging app to Android, and they are seeking 500 beta testers to help them out. The app has, up until now, been an iPhone exclusive, but soon enough Android users will be able to experience the joys of free 3G and Wi-Fi voice calls and messaging. The Android version even gets a few features its iOS counterpart has lacked, including pop-up text message notifications and better integration with the phones messaging and call logs.

If this all sounds good to you, you will want to head over and sign up to be a tester of the new Viber app. The company will be rolling out Viber for Android to 500 users this week, with more to come over the coming weeks. How long the app stays in beta is up in the air, though it reportedly is working quite smoothly.

[via TechCrunch]

Samsung hasn’t even shut the doors on their first New York City press event of the month and they are already asking us to save the date for the next. While tomorrow’s announcement also involves AT&T, the new invitation for an event to take place on May 24th has Sammy flying solo. The invite provides few details, but if we had to guess we’d say this event will be the bigger of the two. Two major product announcements come to mind as possibilities: the US release of the Samsung Galaxy S II or the release of the new line of Samsung Galaxy Tabs.

We know from some previous events that Samsung doesn’t always do what you might expect, but with little else going on in their Android lineup worthy of a big event we are excited at the possibility. Of course, they did throw an event for the Samsung Continuum… Anything could happen.

You shouldn’t be surprised that Asus is already hard at work planning out what will follow their current lineup of Android tablets, which includes the Eee Pad Transformer and a few other yet to be released Honeycomb slates. Next-generation specs seem to be the theme, as the company is said to be developing both a quad-core Tegra 3 (Kal El) tablet and an Intel Atom device. There is no specific word on operating system, but the assumption is at least one will run Android.

If you haven’t read up on Kal El, check out our full report from Mobile World Congress. NVIDIA is aiming to get the next-gen chip into tablets by end of summer/early fall, and we suspect Asus could be among the first with such a device. Will they be able to do it at a similarly unbeatable price point as the Transformer? Let’s wait and see…

[via Engadget]

Samsung has sold over 120,000 Galaxy S II handsets in the first 72 hours of availability in South Korea. The original Galaxy S debuted to 50,000 units sold in the same time period. THe nearly tripled figure is thanks to the availability of the Galaxy S II on multiple carriers — SK Telecom sold 65,000, KT sold 40,000, and LG Uplus sold 15,000. The original was only available initially through SK Telecom.

April pre-orders for the Galaxy S II are estimated to be 270,000, so expect the three day numbers to double in no time at all. Samsung is aiming to eventually move 10 million handsets between the 140 carriers in 120 countries launching the new dual-core Android smartphone.

[via TheNextWeb]

Either Nokia and Microsoft really are trying to conspire the demise of Android (as B&N claim) or the Finnish Phenom (Nokia CEO Stephen Elop) is getting played like a fiddle by HTC CEO Peter Chou. The DowJones Newswires say Nokia’s head honcho is happy they didn’t choose Android because Android manufacturers are worried about their outlook.

“I have discussed it with for example HTC [Corp.'s] Chief Executive Peter Chou. He and many other handset makers are worried that the Android device manufacturers’ profit margins are getting reduced,” Elop said at Nokia’s annual general meeting on Tuesday, according to the newspaper.

I guess Mr. Chou didn’t show him this graph from BoomBustBlog:

Author Reggie Middleton follows that graph with the following statement, probably something Chou didn’t tell Elop either:

You see, Android is a money printing machine, and those who don’t jump on the Android bandwagon will get steamrolled by those who do.

Skyrocketing revenue doesn’t mean skyrocketing profit, but Nokia must have been looking at the wrong memo concerning margins:

And if Nokia missed the boat on these simple facts, they were probably in la-la land (AKA Steve Ballmer’s office) when HTC reported Q1 earnings that included 9.7 million units shipped, 174% year-to-year revenue growth, 162% year-to-year gross profit growth, and 11 to 11.5 million shipments expected in Q2.

Either Nokia is in denial, trying anything it can to drag down Android, or getting played like a fiddle by HTC’s Peter Chou.

Let’s face it: the LAST thing HTC wants is for Nokia to enter the inner Android circle currently occupied by Motorola, Samsung, LG, and HTC. While they might move like a slug in terms of tech innovation, Nokia is still an absolute gorilla, and adopting Android would certainly eat into HTC market share. And apparently the last thing Nokia wants is to wake up from its day dream after dominating the mobile market for years:

Nokia announced in February its new strategy to use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone Software in a new line of handsets in a bid to regain market share

Let us know how that works out for you. The only thing HTC seems worried about his having a big enough rake for all that money.