Android Smartphone Round-Up: December/January Edition

We took a break from the Android round-up in December because, well, to be honest I was on vacation. But January gave us a few extra smartphones and the holidays are over, so we’re back. What we’ve got for you today leans into more expensive turf, and unfortunately, our favorite Android devices for the past

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Jan27

Face.com Launches KLIK, A Real-Time, Facial Recognition Camera App For iPhone

Facial recognition company Face.com has just released a new mobile application that takes advantage of its technology to identify the faces of your friends in photos. Called “KLIK,” the app is a real-time, facial recognition mobile camera app for iPhone that automatically identifies your friends by name before or after you take their their photo.
To

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Jan27

RIM’s New CEO Backtracks: “There Is A Lot Of Change”

On Monday of this week, RIM’s new CEO made a statement that set off a bomb on the blogosphere, and I’m not sure he understood its repercussions at the time. “I don’t think any drastic change is needed.”
If you’ve been paying attention to RIM and its numbers, you know that what the company desperately needs

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Jan27

Apple Overtakes Samsung As World’s Largest Smartphone Vendor In Q4

According to the latest report from Strategy Analytics, Apple has now overtaken Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume. Apple achieved 23.9% market share during Q4 2011, narrowly beating out Samsung’s 23.5% share.
In addition, Apple shipped 37 million units in Q4, again going neck-and-neck with Samsung and its 36.5 million units shipped

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Jan27

Disney, Q-pot Choco, Honey Bee: Japan Gets 3 Extra-Cute Android Phones

Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.
Here are three recent

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Jan27

Android Dominates Moolah Media’s Mobile Ads

It looks like publishers and advertisers are warming to mobile ad startup Moolah Media. The company says that in 2011, it generated 7 million leads for its advertisers — and 1.9 million of those leads (27 percent of the year’s total) came in December.
Also in December, Moolah says its ads reached 45 million Americans. And

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Jan27

Motorola Mobility Closes Out Q4 2011 With An $80 Million Net Loss

Motorola Mobility released their fourth quarter and year-end financials today, and now we can see why they made it a point earlier this month to downplay analyst expectations. The company’s new figures reveal that while Motorola raked in $3.4 billion in Q4 2011, they also incurred a net loss of $80 million.
Things don’t look

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Jan27

Steam Takes First Steps Into Mobile With iOS And Android Apps

As a gamer with admittedly poor impulse control, the newly-released Steam app for iOS and Android has me very worried. On the one hand, it seems like an ideal way to to keep tabs on the popular gaming service on the go.
On the other though, I could easily see myself going overboard on buying

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Jan27

It’s About Time: HTC To Refocus Smartphone Efforts Around “Hero” Devices

HTC has gotten to be remarkably good at churning out phone after phone these days, but it’s gotten to feel like each new release is too little too soon. Thankfully, the godfather of Android hardware has come to its senses, as revealed by Mobile Today.
According to HTC UK head Phil Roberson, 2012 is going

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Jan27

Distimo: Being Featured In The Android Market Can Boost Apps’ Rank By 172%

Earlier this morning, we looked at the findings from analytics provider Distimo‘s latest report, which examined what happens when mobile apps go on sale. (Spoiler: when priced correctly, revenue goes way up). The second part of the report looked at the ranking gains that occur when an app achieves “featured” status in a mobile app store

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Jan27