Dolphin browser adds "Sonar" voice commands

Dolphin browser adds "Sonar" voice commands Posted: 14 hours ago, by Scott H. Categories: Android Apps Bookmark Share this page: Discuss 8 Dolphin browser adds Dolphin, a popular 3rd party browser for iOS and Android devices, has announced that version 7.4 will bring voice commands to Dolphin for Android. We presume that Apple’s tight control over Siri (and the lack of other powerful voice command hooks on earlier iPhones) makes it harder to bring this feature to Apple’s mobile devices, but for those of you with the robot-flavored handsets Dolphin brings you Sonar. Sonar uses Google’s built-in voice recognition API to translate your words to text, before using their Dolphin-specific backend to figure out what the words mean. Even in this initial build you get fairly impressive voice interaction. You can navigate to pages, add new tabs, and use popular social sites (“Facebook Kate Perry”) to search for people. You can also direct Sonar to “Yelp” things if you want reviews of a new restaurant or laundromat you are considering. To help promote Sonar, Dolphin has released a YouTube video that suggests the new voice functions are so fun and useful that you’ll wish everything would respond to your questions this way. It’s fairly amusing and worth a minute and a half of your time, but if time is of the essence you can grab the latest version of Dolphin for Android at the market link below.

source: Dolphin via Tech Crunch, Android Market

Read More

Google's Eric Schmidt's MWC keynote gives us a peek at Chrome, the web and the future

Google's Eric Schmidt's MWC keynote gives us a peek at Chrome, the web and the future Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt stepped up on stage at MWC 2012 and delivered one of the most inspiring talks starting with Google Chrome for Android, how it matches the Android design paradigm and the seamless experience it delivers for various devices. But it wasn’t just about Chrome - Schmidt spoke about Google projects like the self-driving car reiterating that this will become reality sooner rather than later. The idea behind it is not just convenience, but mostly security as over 90% of car accidents in the States are rooted in human error. At the same time, Schmidt warned that the World Wide Web is not exactly world wide - only 2 billion out of the 7 billion population on Earth have access to the Internet. But this will change, Schmidt predicted quoting Moore’s law of processing power doubling every year, then he theorized that in 12 years, "phones that cost $400 will cost $20, and if Google does it right there'll be Android in literally every pocket." Check out the enlightening keynote below and share your thoughts about the technology of the future below. source: Google

Read More

Two Samsung ads found to be the most effective during the Academy Awards telecast

Analytics firm Ace Metrix has a tool used to measure the effectiveness of television ads. Called the "Ace Score", the number takes into account things like "relevance, persuasion, watchability, information" and attention," and runs from 0 to 950. During Sunday's Academy Awards telecast, Samsung finished first and second on a list of the top ten ads from the awards show. The number one spot, with a score of  686, was the Korean based manufacturer's commercial for its "phablet", the Samsung GALAXY Note LTE. In second was Samsung's ad for its Samsung SmarTV, which finished only 21 points behind the top commercial.

Samsung has managed to shake up the usually staid advertising world recently by running a series of television ads that make fun of the typical Apple iPhone fan. The ads even invented a new put down phrase, "Dude, you're a barista," in response to an iPhone user who said he was too creative to own a Samsung Galaxy S II. The series continued through Super Bow Sunday when Samsung ran a 90 second spot for the Samsung GALAXY Note LTE that ended with all of the Apple iPhone users ditching their device for the new "phablet" with the 5.3 inch screen. Actually, one iPhone user remained a hold out and ended up sitting on the line for the next iPhone all by himself. Who was that? Our friend, the barista. You can see that spot again by clicking on the video below.

Top ten ads during the Oscars according to Ace Metrix

Another ad for a mobile device that made the top ten was Sprint's spot for its unlimited data service which features the Apple iPhone 4S and asks why anyone would want to put limits on Apple's smartphone. That ad scored 618 and finished fifth. Apple finished in a tie for sixth with its "Road Trip" ad which showed off the number of ways that Apple's voice activated/personal assistant Siri can be of use to an Apple iPhone 4S user on vacation. That spot tied Subway with 615 points. The very next ad on the list was also for the Apple iPhone and finished with 602 points. In ninth place was an ad for a waterproof tablet from AT&T which scored 599 points and rounding out the top ten with 593 points was Sprint's commercial showing a woman using data wherever she goes.

Not including Google's third place ad for Google+, out of the top ten commercials shown during the Academy Awards, six were for  mobile device. If you've watched any amount of television lately, you would see that many ads during highly-rated prime time shows are for smartphones or tablets.

source: CNET

 

Read More

Android Intel Atom-powered Phones Hands-on Reviews: Lenovo K800, Orange Santa Clara, Lava Xolo X900

ARM is the dominant architecture in the mobile landscape - if you have a smartphone, it’s running on an ARM-based chip, but in the last couple of years chip giant Intel has been trying desperately to enter the mobile market. And this year, it’s finally done it. Intel has signed partnerships with various companies for its upcoming phones running on its Medfield platform (the Atom Z2460 chip), and has announced its roadmap for the future including dual-core processors as well.

We got our hands on three of the first Intel Atom-powered devices at MWC 2012 and here are our initial impressions.

We saw the Lenovo K800 back at CES 2012 - it’s the first handset to arrive with Intel silicon. It’s at MWC as well. 

The handset is not the thinnest phone out there, but it’s not terribly thick either. It’s got a huge 4.5-inch 720p display that does add a bit to the feeling of bulkiness.

The K800 is said to arrive with ICS at launch and it will be skinned with Lenovo’s own UI-enhancing attempts. It packs the Intel Atom Z2460 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, an 8-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash and HSPA+ supporting 21Mbps down speeds. It’s the only handset that differs significantly from the rest as Lenovo has obviously put some effort in designing it - it’s angular, weird and catches the eye which is a good thing.

The Lenovo K800.

The Orange Santa Clara on the other hand doesn’t differ much from Intel’s platform reference design, but it’s a very important handset as it’s the first with Intel’s Medfield chip to try and conquer the European market. It runs on Gingerbread, has a 4-inch WVGA screen and an 8-megapixel camera. Now, the biggest promise of the Santa Clara is better battery life - something we are all eagerly awaiting. Not just because of the obvious advantage, but mostly because we haven’t seen a real proof about it yet.

The Orange Santa Clara.

The Lava Xolo X900 targets the Indian market and it’s virtually identical to Intel’s reference platform for the Medfield chip. You might have not heard about Lava, and that’s because it’s a regional Indian phone maker. The company hasn’t done much in order to differentiate designwise, and while that won’t lure customers, what will is the stock software. 

On the Xolo X900 you have a 1.6GHz single-core processor running what looks like almost stock Gingerbread on a 4-inch screen with a 600x1024 pixels. Now, we should note that the Intel chip manages to run Android smoothly even at single-core which alone is a good achievement.

The camera is another highlight of the Xolo X900 - there’s an 8-megapixel single LED snapper on the back and it comes with some neat tweaks - you can quickly shoot 10 times at 15fps. On the front, there’s a 3-megapixel camera. You won't be able to get this one stateside though, it's currently only planned to land in India in Q2 2012.

The Lava Xolo X900.

Read More

Sprint to pick up HTC One X as the EVO HD LTE?

If rumors are to be believed, HTC's next flagship device for Sprint is code-named the HTC Jewel and will be a CDMA/LTE variant of the HTC One X.  HTC and Sprint have gone on the record about the EVO name spanning many devices, and so far we have had the EVO 4G, the EVO Shift 4G,EVO 3D, EVO View 4G and the EVO Design 4G.  As the flagship EVO 3D nears its first birthday we would expect to see another flagship EVO launched, and with HTC simplifying their product line the One X would be a viable candidate.

The HTC EVO HD LTE has been thrown out as a name for the rumored device, but since we don't know that it even exists that is subject to change.  What we can reasonably assume is that- like AT&T's HTC One XL- this new EVO would be powered by a Qualcomm S4 processor instead of the NVIDIA Tegra 3 found on the international One X.  The EVO 4G and EVO 3D both launched in June of their respective years so we can assume that we'd see an early summer launch for this next EVO flagship device.  Unfortunately that puts it just outside of the "second half 2012" ship dates for the Qualcomm S4 Pro and it's Adreno 320 GPU, but one can hope.

When pictures of the HTC One X surfaced with that red camera ring we couldn't help but think EVO, and given HTC and Sprint's healthy relationship we expect to see a very high end EVO this summer, whether it be a One X variant or not.  We'll keep our ears to the ground on this rumor, but we wouldn't be surprised to hear something one way or the other at CTIA in May.

Source: PocketNow via phandroid

Read More