Nielsen reports that 31 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers said they would prefer Android for their next phone, compared to 30 percent for the iPhone. Overall, Nielsen estimates that 37 percent of smartphone subscribers and 50 percent of recent subscribers use Android phones, up sharply from January.

(more…)

Norco announced a Mini-ITX motherboard equipped with an Intel QM67 chipset, supporting Intel's “Sandy Bridge” Core i7/i5/i3 processors. The MITX-6920 supports up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, and offers four RAID-capable SATA ports, three PCI Express interfaces, a 3G SIM slot, plus generous quantities of gigabit Ethernet, serial, and USB connectivity, says the company.

(more…)

HP announced a business-oriented mini-notebook using AMD's dual-core, 1.6GHz E-350 processor. The 3105m includes an 11.6-inch display, up to 8GB of RAM, a 250GB or 320GB hard disk drive, a six-cell battery, an available cellular modem, and a choice of operating systems, according to the company.

(more…)

Verizon Wireless announced two new Android 2.2 phones, led by HTC's four-inch, global-roaming Droid Incredible 2 phone, which features dual cameras, including an eight-megapixel model. The ruggedized Casio G'zOne Commando, meanwhile, offers a 3.6-inch WVGA display, a five-megapixel camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, as well as special field-ready apps linked to the phone's sensors.

(more…)

LG Electronics announced it has taken out a license with ARM Holdings that will give it access to the Cortex-A15 MPCore and Cortex-A9 MPCore processors. Also covering ARM's Mali-T604 GPU (graphics processing unit) and CoreLink interconnect and system IP, the agreement will “drive … applications that include digital TV, set top boxes (STB), mobile phones, tablets, and smart grids,” the company says.

(more…)

A second major power regression in the Linux kernel has been discovered by Phoronix benchmarks. Following last week's discovery that Ubuntu 11.04 shows a 10 to 26 percent increase in power consumption over Ubuntu 10.10, in a problem traced to Linux kernel 2.6.38 and currently being investigated by Canonical, Phoronix found there was a 20 percent increase in power consumption in last summer's Linux 2.6.35.

(more…)

Sony announced a pair of Android 3.0 tablets that integrate Sony's Qriocity video and audio, Sony Reader ebook content, and Playstation Suite games. Due to arrive this fall, the Sony Tablet S1 is a 9.4-inch model with a wedge-shaped design, while the S2 offers a folding clamshell format with dual 5.5-inch screens that can be viewed as a single display.

(more…)

NetLogic Microsystems announced a new version of its Linux-ready XLP processor family that doubles the number of MIPS64 cores on board to 16. The XLP864 supports up to 2GHz clock rates and, with the help of more than 80 processing engines, enables 80Gbps throughput and 120 million packets-per-second (Mpps) performance, says the company.

(more…)

Moxa announced a fanless, Intel Atom N270-based computer intended to be a network video recorder in railway and industrial applications. The V2416 includes two bays for hot-swappable disk drives, a CompactFlash slot, VGA and DVI-I video outputs, four serial ports, and dual gigabit Ethernet ports with M12-type connectors, the company says.

(more…)

Texas Instruments (TI) announced a new single-core TMS320C6671 member of its multicore TMS320C66x digital signal processor (DSP) family, as well as enhancements to its TMS320C6670 radio system-on-chip (SoC). In addition, the company released a free multicore software development kit (MCSDK) update for its C66x DSPs featuring updated Linux kernel support, optimized DSP libraries, and support for the OpenMP programming model.

(more…)

Barnes & Noble announced an automatic update this week for its Nook Color e-reader that turns the device into more of a low-cost Android tablet. New features offered by the 1.2.0 update include 125 apps, an email application, and support for Adobe Flash, says the online retailer.

(more…)

Lenovo is readying an Android 3.0 tablet that offers a pen option and plugs into a keyboard dock, says and industry report. Meanwhile, Archos announced its seven-inch, Android-based 7c Home Tablet, and Samsung is rumored to be building Amazon's first Android tablet.

(more…)

Portwell announced a modular 1U network appliance that supports Intel's recently announced Xeon E3 CPUs. The CAR-4010 comes with eight or 16 gigabit Ethernet ports, up to 16GB of RAM, two or four hard disk drives, a CompactFlash slot, PCI Express expansion, and a front-panel character display, the company says.

(more…)

E-Con Systems announced a one megapixel “wide dynamic range” camera module that supports 720p video at 30 frames per second. Available in an evaluation kit designed to plug into Texas Instruments' Cortex-A8-based OMAP3530 EVM, the e-CAM1M_CU10630_MOD is equipped with an S-mount lens holder, and offers an OmniVision OV10630 sensor, offering provide excellent low light sensitivity, says the company.

(more…)

Verizon Wireless will begin selling a 4G LTE-ready 4.3-inch “Droid Charge by Samsung” Android phone on April 28 for a whopping $300 plus contract. Meanwhile, Verizon says the 4G- and Android-ready HTC Thunderbolt has been a hot seller, and Motorola has confirmed that the Verizon launch of its Droid Bionic phone will be delayed until summer.

(more…)