The Motorola Mirage might just be the best Android phone yet

Oh, Android – how good you have been for Motorola. It was only months ago that they were teetering on the edge of obscurity; one 350-person Android task force later, they’ve got the most popular Android handset in the lands and are being name dropped on a nearly daily basis around the rumor mill.

A Chinese leakster managed to get his mitts on this (confusingly obscured) shot of an unreleased Motorola handset, and was nice enough to
share it with the world. According to the original source, the handset you see up there is called the Motorola Shadow (or “Mirage”, depending on who’s translation you believe.)

What the tipster lacks in well-framed pictures, they make up for with knowledge of the specs: coming in at a ridiculously thin 9mm, this baby supposedly packs a monstrous 4.3 inch screen running at a resolution of 850×484, an HDMI port (shown in the pic), and an 8 megapixel camera ready to shoot video in 1080p. They don’t mention an operating system, and the pic doesn’t help much in that department – but unless Motorola’s doing something crazy, it’s a pretty safe bet that we’re looking at a UI mod of Android.

Samsung Mobile to launch absolutely nothing at CES?

Remember the last time Samsung went more than a few days without launching a new phone? Yeah, neither do we – so you’ll have to pardon us if we sound a bit skeptical here. When we got word that Samsung Mobile was holding their CES press conference at the ungodly hour of 7:30 A.M on the Day 2 of CES (otherwise known as Day 1 of being hungover), my curiosity was piqued. I mean, who the hell launches a new phone at 7:30 in the morning, halfway through a show? Not Samsung, it
seems.

We reached out to a source who has never steered us wrong with the Samsung-related knowledge before, in hopes that they could shed some light on what ol’ Sammies prepping for launch. Their response? There’s nothing to shed light on. As of this morning, roughly a week before what is quite easily the most important electronics show in the US, we’re told Samsung Mobile has no plans to launch any handsets at CES. Expect TVs-a-plenty from Samsung – but unless something changes soon, all will be quiet on the mobile front.

Acer’s Aspire One officially gets a little spec bump

Hold on to your hats, folks! It’s a doozy. Wait… I’m being told it’s actually a minor, but significant, change to an Acer Netbook, and one we already heard about. Sorry.

Well, as long as you’re here: it seems that the popular Acer Aspire One, a perfectly decent netbook if
I ever saw one, is going to be sporting the new Atom N450 processor. This is the newest Atom, and it lowers wattage while integrating graphics. So you can expect slightly better battery life and better performance, although the clock speed is still hanging out at the same old 1.66GHz.

Good for Acer, but hold on to your wallets. We expect pretty much every netbook maker have similar specs after the next week or so. That’s not so long to wait, is it? Just chill a bit, watch our CES coverage, and then decide which is the best afterwards. I’m betting Doug is just itching to get hands-on with all these things. He’s like that.

Here are the full specs from the press release. Should go for $300 MSRP, less of course on the strizzle.

Acer Aspire One AO532h
• Intel® Atom(TM) Processor N450 (1.66GHz, 512KB L2 cache, 667MHz FSB)
• 10.1″ WSVGA Acer CrystalBrite(TM) LED-backlit Display
• Mobile Intel® NM10 Express Chipset
• Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3150
• 1024MB DDR2 667MHz Memory
• 160GB(2) 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader
• Acer InviLink(TM) Nplify(TM) 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi CERTIFIED®
• 10/100 Fast Ethernet LAN (RJ-45)
• Built-in Webcam
• Two Built-in Stereo Speakers
• Multi-Gesture Touchpad
• 3 – USB 2.0 Ports
• 6-cell Li-ion Battery (4400 mAh)
• 2.76 lbs. | 1.25 kg
• 10.17” (W) x7.28” (D) x .99” (H)
• Windows® 7 Starter
• Three stylish colors: Onyx Blue, Garnet Red and Silver Matrix.
• MSRP: $299.99

Handheld PS3 device for fanbois to cuddle at night

So here’s a somewhat interesting gadget. Instead of converting a PS3 into a hand-held device, a crafty modder named techknott built a custom transmitter. The transmitter allows a player to not only control their PS3 remotely, but also to view the output on a small video screen.

Essentially, you’re combining a
controller with a wireless video device, and a small LCD screen. Sounds simple right? Well, it’s might be simple, but looking at the fabrication quality in the video, it’s obviously something that required quite a bit of time and effort.

Watch the video below:

Swype For Android Beta Unofficially Available For Motorola Droid

When Swype was nice enough to give us the world’s first hands-on with their ultra-nifty alternative keyboard on the Motorola Android platform, I wasn’t about to leak the installation files. It’s just not my style. Now that someone else has gone and leaked them, though, I’m more or less obligated to show you how to get it up and running. I tell you, folks — this blogging thing is one endless inner conflict.

After coming up with an awesome name for
their blog, the guys over at DroidMuff.in got their hands on a beta copy of Swype for Android and uploaded it for all to share. This specific installer won’t work on every Android handset — in fact, it won’t work on most. This one’s tailored to work with WVGA phones, so it’ll work fine on the likes of the Motorola Droid and the Xperia X3, but not the Droid Eris or HTC Hero.

If you’re ready to dive in, here’s how to get it done:

1. Download and install the Astro file manager from the Android Marketplace
2. Download this zip file
3. Unzip that file, which will give you a file called “[mfhs]Swype-SwypeReference-WVGA854-trial-release.0.35.3959.apk”
4. Copy the APK file to your handset’s SD card
5. On your Android handset, go to Settings > Applications > and check the box next to Unknown Sources
6. Use Astro to browse for the apk file on your SD card, install it.
7. Go to Settings > Language and Keyboard. Enable the Swype keyboard.
8. You should now be able to switch between the standard keyboard and the Swype keyboard by tapping-and-holding on any text input field.
9. Enjoy!

You’ve heard what we think of Swype, so be sure to tell us what you think down in the comments below.

Mophie To Launch Their Own iPhone Credit Card Reader

Between CES and Google’s press event, next week is bound to be a torrential mess of press releases. Looking to sneak onto the radar before every tech writer in the lands is pulled into cranking out post after post on the latest and great from the industry’s big guns, iPhone accessory maker Mophie has gone ahead and put their upcoming wares on the table.

Known primarily for their battery packs and cases, Mophie is about to jump into a
whole new ball pit: credit card readers for the iPhone.

Considering that Mophie has thus far stuck solely to the hardware end of the iPhone add-on game, this seems like an odd market for them to dive into. So much so, in fact, that I initially thought they were just releasing the credit card reader (pictured above) as an alternative to typing your credit card into various applications by hand or, perhaps, as a more aesthetically pleasing piece of hardware for Jack Dorsey’s Square.

With a bit more reading, however, it looks Mophie might be prepping to square off (had to do it) against Dorsey’s service with a software solution of their own. Here’s what Mophie said on the matter:

Marking its first combination hardware and private label iPhone application device, mophie is launching its innovative new credit card reader, empowering users to complete financial transactions on the go.

The wording of that was just vague enough that it left things a bit unclear; they are indeed bringing their own software – but what was it for? Under that definition, this could still be little more than an easier (if a bit silly) way for consumers to input credit card numbers whilst ordering online. We prodded for more info – here’s the response:

The credit card reader works with an iPhone application and is meant for small business owners to conduct transactions easier.

So there we have it folks – Mophie’s getting into the transaction business. Whether or not they’ll be handling the payment processing themselves (as Square is) or simply acting as a middle-man for a service like Paypal or Authorize.net is still unclear. Look for more details to emerge during CES next week.

Google Nexus One Mobile Review

It’s all official now. Google has sent out invitations to the January 5, 2010 launch date of the Nexus One Android phone.

When it first leaked out, I wasn’t too excited about it because of a couple of things — that this isn’t the first Google Android (the G1 was), that there are other similarly configured Android phones in the market (HTC Hero, Motorola Droid) and most especially that this isn’t really
manufactured by Google but instead, by HTC all the same.

Still, the Google Nexus One is a looker with the promise of the better and sleeker Android 2.0 OS. The specs in itself is drool-worthy.

Nexus One
Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor
3.7 inches, 480 x 854 pixels
AMOLED capacitive touchscreen
512MB RAM, 512MB ROM
up to 32GB (on microSD card)
HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1
Stereo FM radio with RDS
5 MP camera with autofocus ( 2560х1920 pixels) and LED flash
Li-Ion 1400 mAh
Android OS v2.1

All these for a suggested retail price of $530. Not bad at all considering I bought my HTC Hero for $642 last month.

The other rumor that was going around before was that Google wanted to sell the Nexus One at cost for just $200 and will take profit from the use of Google services, apps and other content. That would have been awesome but did not materialized.

Nevertheless, The Nexus One deserves a good stare and people are excited just because it’s Google. If it starts selling in the US for $530 on January 5, I think you can order one and have it shipped to the Philippines all for under Php30,000 (taxes, custom duties and shipping included). Hopefully, I can grab a unit to show and review, assuming I have the budget.