Cell Bytes

Motorola is working on a superphone with a dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU, we all know that, but we have close to zero info about it. Ever wonder why? For one, Moto is keeping the secret about the device and it’s also got a strict non-disclosure agreement with its partners, including NVIDIA.

What’s sure is that this device will come with Android 3.0 Gingerbread, after the OS gets released. Speculations claim that this superphone will make current Android devices look like toys, since it’ll provide 2x faster web browsing and up to 5x faster gaming performance, among others.

Also, Motorola wants to keep it a secret, else it would kill all the Moto smartphones available with Android 2.1 at Christmas time, because people will choose to keep their money and purchase the new phone. The company’s boss, Sanjay Jha considers this handset his baby and it most certainly will be, once Motorola splits into 2 segments and Jha leads the Moto Mobility one.

While some sources claim that the Droid superphone will only be sold by Verizon, it’s possible that the US phone maker uses a strategy similar to the one that involved Samsung Galaxy S, sold through all major carriers. To top it all, this new handset could support 4G LTE, putting the US carriers’ new networks to good use.

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Amazon is continuing its streak of offering devices for the extremely low price of a single US cent, this time putting the Motorola Droid 2 up for sale at the price. For a measly 1/100 of a dollar and a new two-year contract the phone can be all yours. You will need to add the item to your cart to see the price, and it looks like you will also qualify for free shipping. That’s a savings of $199.98 from what you would pay through Verizon.

It kind of makes you want to hold off an initial smartphone purchase at launch knowing it may very well go up for a cent through Amazon. No clue how long the deal will last, so if you are thinking about it you may want to jump in quick.

TweetDeck likes collecting data. Most companies do, in fact. Not all of them like to share their data, though, but TweetDeck’s just vomited a nice helping of data regarding usage of the Android version of their Twitter client which is still in beta. I’m going to skip all of the boring stuff regarding device and version distribution, but there are a few fun takeaways to be had.

First of all: the HTC Glacier is still out there. At least three people have been using TweetDeck on the device. I’m sure this will make some of our readers (coughKELLERcough) happy, but we still have no idea about the status of this device. All we know is that it’s likely headed to T-Mobile and will be a high-end monster of a cellphone.

The Motorola Droid 2 Global Edition is also still making its rounds. We used to be keen on calling this device the Motorola Droid Pro, but we already know what happened with that. Here are the rest of the obscure pieces of data gathered from their latest report:

• Android Gingerbread is real, and there’s a substantial amount of people already testing it in the field
• We’ve all seen YouTube videos with Nokia N900 and HTC HD2 running Android. Now we have proof. 103 Tweedeck Android users had HD2’s, and 6 of them had Nokia N900. There was also one HTC Kaiser user spotted out there, too. What do you know – there still are some people running Android on the good old HTC TyTN II…
• The rumored uber fast HTC Glacier is also out there in the field, probably undergoing some tests. 3 Tweetdeck users were caught with it
• While Motorola Droid 2 Global Edition missed the CTIA announcement date, it seems that it is still out there somewhere, and may be announced soon.

Everything else they’ve found can be had at their website.

Remember @Androidevicespy? It was the same Twitter account that tipped us off to Verizon’s collection of Motorola phones long before Verizon was willing to come clean (and before any of their leaksters were willing to spill the beans beforehand.) It seems the same Twitter account has picked up on the Motorola Olympus MB860 that just passed WiFi certification a couple of weeks ago. We know the phone is out there by now, but the device tracker suggests this phone has already been in testing for AT&T.

We suspect the Olympus MB860 could be the super-duper-phone that Motorola Mobility’s CEO Sanjay Jha isn’t trying to unwrap for the time being, but we have no hard evidence to back that up just yet (just the trusty word of industry colleagues.) It was once believed that this device would be headed for Verizon and Verizon only, but later reports suggested Verizon wouldn’t be the only carrier to enjoy Motorola’s high-end goods as they’ve been keen on doing.

[via Droid-Life]

Looks like we’re moving closer and closer toward a release of Android 2.2 for those of you Milestone owners in Europe. It’s been a lengthy, drawn out process, but Motorola’s finally making progress and it seems you guys will be getting a nice gift heading into the holiday seasons.

Hello. From next week we start user trials of the European Milestone upgrade to Froyo. Once these are complete, we will know what further work is required to optimise, before going into final testing and approval stage. As previously we plan to start rolling the update at the end of this year, but wanted to keep you updated. Thanks

This was after Motorola was unsure if they would even issue an upgrade to Android 2.2 for the device. I’m not so sure they would’ve received as much backlash as they did if they hadn’t quickly issued that same upgrade for the American counterpart – the Motorola Droid on Verizon.

Everything’s well for at least one group of you now, though. We’re still awaiting their decision on the Latin American Milestone, and we’re still waiting for users on their 1.5 devices to be stepped up to Android 2.1. Let’s get this ball rolling sooner rather than later, Moto.

[via Motorola Europe Facebook] [Thanks, Richy!]

The smartphone of the future might lose its sleek, solid shell to become soft and squeezable, able to alter its appearance to signal an alert. New Scientist reports.

Shwetak Patel, a computer science and engineering researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues have developed a squeezable cellphone – SqueezeBlock – using tiny motors built into the casing to mimic the behaviour of a spring.

… Shwetak’s team isn’t alone in exploring how a handset’s physical attributes could communicate something about its state. Back in 2008, Fabian Hemmert, a researcher at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, Germany, breathed virtual life into a cellphone. His phone “inhales” and “exhales” at a steady rate, which can increase suddenly to indicate an incoming call, or ebb away as the battery dies.

Read full article.

Other squeezable cell phone concepts: -The soft phone concept by Qian