Motorola reduced the price of its Wi-Fi only Xoom tablet to $500. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Motorola announced on Wednesday that its Android tablet is now available for a hundred bucks cheaper than before, now priced the same as the entry-level iPad 2.

Originally priced at $600, Motorola’s Xoom tablet is now available for $500 in its Wi-Fi only version. The price reduction was announced via Motorola’s Twitter account, and first reported by The Business Insider.

Motorola’s Xoom was the first device to run Google’s tablet-optimized version of Android, (Honeycomb), beating all other major tablet manufacturers to market with its February release date. Sporting Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor, an interface which eschews physical buttons and a fancy black matte finish, the Xoom looked like the tablet to beat in 2011.

The head start, however, doesn’t seem to have worked in Motorola’s favor. Critics of the Xoom denounced Motorola’s high prices right out of the gate — $600 for Wi-Fi only, and a whopping $800 for the Verizon 3G capable version. Compare that to the entry-level iPad 2’s $500 price tag, or even the fellow Android-powered Acer Iconia A500, priced at $450. A $500 base price tag is the predominant standard for the field, originally set by Apple.

It’s unclear whether the 3G-capable version of the tablet will take a price hit, though Motorola’s website shows no change to the price currently.

Verizon Wireless did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The 3G version can be purchased at a subsidized rate, however; a Xoom with a two-year Verizon contract will set you back $600.

We don’t know if this device is “super confidential” or not, but we’ve just come across yet another Nokia N9 lookalike with a non-MeeGo operating system on board. Well, it looks that way, anyhow. There’s no way to verify that the Android homescreen we see above is a legitimate Gingerbread installation and not a mere screenshot (the resolution looks all wrong, for one thing), but the source of this image is the same Chinese fellow that posted a picture of Nokia’s Windows Phone prototype, the Sea Ray, way back in May, so we’re inclined to believe he’s got an inside line on these things. Additionally, the undersized Android UI elements on the screen actually encourage us to believe that this is indeed a Nokia testing device — if we were going to fake something like this, we’d use a regular screen grab for our tomfoolery — and Stephen Elop has openly admitted that Nokia spent a couple of wild seconds contemplating a switch to Android. Well, folks, here’s what that alternate future might have looked like.

Continue reading Nokia’s Android flirtations revealed

Nokia’s Android flirtations revealed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon Droid Incredible 2 confirmed to be a world phone, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : iPad 2 Review, Atrix Review,

No more stunt prices, no more premature web appearances, this (we hope) is finally Best Buy’s fully official listing for the Motorola Xoom. It brings no great surprises to those who’ve been tracking the tablet’s progress to retail shelves, offering first dibs to buyers willing to lay claim to a pre-order in-store and promising full availability on Thursday, February 24th. The $800 3G-equipped model is accompanied on Best Buy’s site by a $40 portfolio case, a $50 basic charging dock, a $130 stereo speaker dock, and a $70 Bluetooth keyboard, but there’s no sighting of the cheaper WiFi-only Xoom. There was some suspicion that the $600 SKU would launch a little later on and that is indeed what appears to be happening. One final note of caution: even if you’re intending to use the Xoom as a pure WiFi-only device, remember that you’ll be required to activate data with Verizon for at least a month first — don’t ask us why.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Motorola Xoom up for in-store pre-order at Best Buy, $800 for Thursday availability originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 03:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Thanks, TIll]

Webby is the Android-powered Chumby thing that hasn’t won any awards — yet originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Feb 2011 03:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Angry Birds, the insanely popular multi-platform game, is introducing a new payment system to some Android customers for purchasing in-game content.

Angry Birds game players will be able to use their real cash money to pay for virtual goods existing only within the game’s ecosystem. It’s like buying a shovel for your plot on Farmville with your Mastercard.

The title? “Bad Piggy Bank.”

Yes, it has a stupid name. And yes, it’s only for Android/Angry Birds customers on the Elisa mobile carrier network in Finland. But it’s more significant than you might think.

Now, users won’t have to whip out the plastic every time they want to buy that shovel. Instead of typing in your 16-digit number when you want to purchase an item, you select content you want to purchase in the game, and select the Bad Piggy Bank icon (above), according to Rovio’s blog post. The charges are made via your phone’s SMS text messaging system, and the cost will appear in your phone bill.

The introduction of in-app payments are a step towards solving a big problem in dealing with virtual economies — how to get players to pay real dollars for non-real items. With in-app payments, developers reduce what is called the “friction” within app ecosystem purchases. That is, it’s much easier to fork over your cash when all it takes is a single click. And developer studios like Rovio want to make it as easy as possible on its customer base.

Until as recently as last Wednesday, Android users were bound to certain payment methods like Google Checkout, a service with a history plagued by user complaints. Direct carrier billing — which bills your mobile service provider for the app purchases you make — has been available since 2009, but only to T-Mobile customers using Android devices. A second carrier, AT&T, was added as recently as December.

Needless to say, payment options for Android OS devices have moved sluggishly forward over the past two years.

“This is one of the bigger issues that all the developers have with Android,” said Rovio CEO Mikael Hed in a previous interview with Wired.com. “It doesn’t have iTunes.”

Like Hed says, Apple hasn’t faced the payment issues in the same way. Each and every customer accessing the iOS App store is required to have an iTunes account, which is linked to an existing credit card account. With the Android Market, not all users even have Google Checkout.

That type of non-straightforward payment system seems to have led to a culture of freeloading on Google’s ecosystem.

“Nobody pays on Android,” says Rovio’s Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka.

Google wants to change that. Last week’s rollout of the Android Market web store brought users the chance to download apps from their desktop browser and “push” the apps to their Android mobile devices, easing the browse-ability of Android’s app catalog while hopefully increasing app sales.

Trying to lure in more Android app developers as well, app vendors are now able to specify the cost of each app in multiple currency amounts, saving users the time they spent doing the math on currency conversion themselves.

As mentioned before, Angry Birds is only allowing in-app payments for those on the Elisa mobile carrier network in Finland, but Google expects in-app payments to be available to all Android users before the end of spring. With that sort of time frame and the biggest app across all platforms already featuring the method of payment, we’ll have to wait and see if Android users start to pony up more dough.

Brian X. Chen contributed to this report.

Photo: Bad Piggy Bank/Rovio

See Also:

• How Angry Birds Is Becoming the Next Super Mario
• Angry Birds
• IPhone
• The Physics of Angry Birds
• iPhone Review: Angry Birds Make Great Projectiles
• Real-Life Angry Birds Adds Human Interaction to Your Addiction …
• Google Launches Android Market Web Store, Improves Payment System …
• Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market
• Google Removes Flash App From Android Market

The Motorola Xoom’s release is close, very close. How do we know that? Well, Moto has just handed one to Chad Ochocinco — one of the NFL’s most recklessly loquacious players — and you don’t do that with an unfinished product. For his part, Chad’s finding the Honeycomb tablet to be “pretty awesome” and regretfully informs Motorola that it “won’t be getting this back.” Tracking Chad’s tweets reveals that he’s just landed in Dallas, site of this year’s Super Bowl, where he’s received the Android-driven hardware. Something tells us neither he nor Motorola’s tablet will spend the next week hiding in the shadows — look for a lot more screen time for both in the buildup to the big game (and Moto’s big halftime ad). One last note? Chad’s image above was taken using an iPhone 4. Guess he’s holding out for the Atrix 4G.

[Thanks, Zizo]

Motorola Xoom lands in Chad Ochocinco’s safe hands, is ‘pretty awesome’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 03:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A picture of Samsung's first generation Vibrant, released during the Summer of 2010

Pictures of what look to be leaked press promotional materials of a new Samsung Android-based smartphone have been circulating the web this morning. If they’re the real deal, it could mean that last year’s Samsung Vibrant will soon have a 4G brother.

The mystery device highlighted in the leaked materials is aptly named the Samsung Vibrant 4G, according to pictures acquired by mobile blog TmoNews. From the looks of it, the hardware specs line up with the first-generation, 3G Vibrant (shown above): 1GHz processor, 4-inch super AMOLED screen, 16GB SD card storage (upgradable to 32GB), all the bells and whistles of the non-4G predecessor.

To keep it from being a complete rehash of last year’s model with 4G tacked on to the end, the new Vibrant does seem to have a few new upgrades. First, there’s the addition of a front-facing camera (pixel resolution not yet specified), a feature that seems to be about par for the course in the coming generation of smartphones we saw at CES last week. While it’s playing catch-up with the iPhone 4, we think it’ll soon be a standard for higher-end smartphones in the industry.

Another perk: The new Vibrant will supposedly run an upgraded version of Android, version 2.2 ‘Froyo,’ rather than the 2.1 ‘Eclair’ of last year’s model. (Though it’s still no version 2.3 ‘Gingerbread,’ the most recent release.)

What T-Mobile really seems to be hyping, according to TmoNews’ photos, is the phone’s claimed increase in speed. The Vibram 4G would run on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network, which T-Mobile spokesperson Erica Gordon says is capable of “theoretical peak download speeds of up to 21 Mbps.” Depending on the city you live in, what you’ll probably get is something closer to what independent test groups have found, somewhere in the area of 4 to 5.5 Mbps down and 1 to 2Mbps up.

T-Mobile offered no comment to specific questions about the rumored device, and Samsung followed suit.

If the phone does indeed exist, T-Mobile and Samsung are most likely betting it will do as well as its predecessors in the Galaxy S series of smartphones. We’ll continue to report on news of the Vibrant 4G as it breaks.

See Also:

• Samsung Vibrant Looks Like an iPhone, Has Battery Life to Match
• First Look: Samsung Vibrant Rips Off iPhone 3G Design
• Samung
• First Look
• T-Mobile, Garmin Announce New Android Phone

Photo: Samsung Vibrant (Stefan Armijo/Wired.com)

According to the WSJ, Google is in talks with publishing houses for a “digital newsstand” Android app, for selling daily mobile newspapers and magazine subscriptions through. But what about Amazon’s Android Kindle app, which already does that? More »

It’s not official but that image above sure as hell looks like an official AT&T training document. AT&T already announced that it would carry the Samsung Galaxy Tab but has been coy with details about launch date, pricing, and custom apps. Now, if the screengrab above can be believed, we know that it’ll hit AT&T shops on November 21st for a “HQ recommended” price of $649.99 without contract and featuring the same data plans (250MB for $14.99 per month or 2GB for $25 per month) AT&T offers alongside its $629 16GB WiFi + 3G iPad offering. Right, that’s 20 bucks and change more for half the display and $50 more than the base price of Verizon’s Galaxy Tab offering. Of course, AT&T will preinstall the Nook eReader and the AT&T Account Manager app for on-device activation and monthly credit refills. Not sure that’s worth the premium though. Hold tight to see how this plays out as we should see an official pricing and launch date announcement any day now.

[Thanks, tipster]

Galaxy Tab hitting AT&T on November 21st for a $649 premium? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 03:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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