Another week’s gone past, and believe it or not, there are stories other than the Galaxy S III announcement to talk about. But we’ll definitely be talking about that first. Android Community was present at Samsung’s London event to bring you all the juicy details, which you can find in our wrap-up feature. Long story short: the Galaxy S III is big, powerful, crammed with custom software… and a little on the bland side as far as design goes.
In other hardware news, AT&T’s version of the HTC One X launched today, though some lucky customers got their phones early. Bell Canada is getting the little brother HTC One S, and everyone can get a sweet kickstand case for it soon. LG and Pantech both introduced new models to compete with Samsung’s new flagship: the Optimus LTE 2 and Racer Vega 2, respectively. The 13-inch Toshiba Excite 13 was spotted at the FCC, and T-Mobile customers can get the budget-priced Prism 3G by Huawei starting today. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 went up for pre-order at a reasonable $399.
On the software side of things, Samsung scheduled updates for all of its high-end Galaxy smartphones and tablets in Canada. Ice Cream Sandwich updates leaked for the HTC EVO 3D and Rezound (again), and T-Mobile promised an update for the Sensation 4G – without giving a date. Motorola’s Cliq 2 got an official update… to Gingerbread. Whoopie. The Galaxy Note version of CyanogenMod 9 got a boost from S-Pen support, and the Android Open Kang Project reached milestone 5. Swiftkey, Adobe Flash and AirDroid all received major updates. EA tried to shut down the paid mobile version of Rock Band, then quickly rescinded.
In more general news, Google added carrier billing to the Google Play Store for all US providers… except Verizon. Samsung’s on top of the world after beating Apple in smartphone sales, and Motorola, well, isn’t. LG has planned a competitor to Google Drive and similar services, and Runkeeper announced it would be the first app on the Pebble Smart Watch. Android’s distribution numbers for April came out, revealing a still-disappointing 4.9% Ice Cream Sandwich penetration.
Here on Android Community, you’ll want to check out our review of the phone that’s now going head to head with the Samsung Galaxy S III for top dog of the US Android field: AT&T’s HTC One X. We’ve also got an in-depth look at Google’s return to retail with the unlocked Galaxy Nexus on the Google Play Store. Until tomorrow, stay in school, don’t do drugs and always make a Nandroid backup.
