We hope everyone had a great year, but it’s time to look forward to some of the amazing unknown gadgets of 2012! The final week of tech news for 2011 will be covered in this issue of ACW. First off, both the Kindle Fire and NOOK Color received unofficial Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) ports. Both are still in their Alpha stages, so expect bugs until the kinks are worked out.
Tuesday, Google’s Eric Schmidt stated there would be a Google branded Android tablet coming within the next six months. There’s still no idea who may manufacture it, but I’m sure it’s going to be packed with the latest and greatest hardware. It is actually surprising they’ve prolonged an official Google tablet release. Having the “Nexus” developmental smartphone line, it seems only fit to have a tablet counterpart.
In May of 2012, we should see the Meizu MX quad-core smartphone hit the market. But what other quad-core devices will become unveiled? Only time will tell, but it may very well become the new “norm” in 2012. Also Tuesday, Gameloft announced a “mega sale” of almost all their games for 99¢ for the weekend. It turns out that the sale is still going on now, and eventually they will announce via their Twitter feed (@gameloft) that Modern Combat 3 will drop to .99 as well.
Verizon was having some significant signal outages this Wednesday, and they finally started to clear up between Thursday and Friday. This was the third outage in December, and if Verizon plans on keeping their title as “most reliable network”, then they better shape up their 4G LTE network in the coming months. A leak also suggested Verizon would charge a $2.00 convenience fee when paying your bill, but once this information spread – Verizon responded by completely axing the fee altogether. A wise decision indeed.
Finally, be sure to check out a roundup of the five best (and worst) Android devices of 2011 by Michael Crider. We at Android Community hope you had a great break during the holidays, and a happy New Year!
