Android 2.2 Coming to a TV Near China!

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No, this isn’t Google TV. This is the work of Chinese video-tech company Geniatech. Their Android TV box runs 2.2 (FroYo) and… well it does a lot of what Google TV does, or will do at least once Google starts rolling out Honeycomb 3.1 to Google TV later this summer. In the mean time though Geniatech seems to promising a lot out of this device, even if its just promising what Google TV is promising. But hey, that’s the beauty of open source.

SInce Android is open source people can run it on just about anything they can pay an engineer to squeeze it on to, and if one person thinks they can do it better or faster than someone else that’s free game too. And this is what brings us to Android TV. The creator’s site describes their creation as follows.

Android TV is a TV tuner box, a Media player, a Netbook, a digital photo frame, a game console and a internet set-top, it provides a new television entertainment and brings you very powerful internet TV experience
Android is an open source system, free for manufactures to use
Users can use set top box device with Android TV feature to make your home TV an internet TV
With Android TV, you can view and download several of videos and games to make home TV more than a TV
A full HD support media box with internet connection and HDMI output bases on Android 2.2, Geniatech Android TV provides you the capability of all-in-one box entertainment box on your big TV screen.

Geniatech claims the box can run any Android Application that doesn’t require a microphone, but no mention of a GPS unit or telephony radios is made so this may be a bit of a broad claim. What they do explicitly point out is that Android TV is a functioning digital TV receiver, which is a key difference between this product and simply mirroring your phone on a TV screen. Geniatech also mentions its possible to use the box as a home gaming console, picture frame, and “internet box.”
This is a lot to promises for a platform that Google itself has had to take its time with. Throw in the fact that there are a couple spelling errors on the site (given it is run by a foreign company), and several discrepancies on the site in regards to the specs, and my faith in the machine is a little shaken. Nonetheless, its cool to see Android continuing its spread to other platforms, even if its already been to this particular one. We’ll have to wait and see if anything comes out of this though, since the manufacturer makes no mention of availability on its website.
Let us know what you think.

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LG Revolution May 26 Launch with Netflix, Froyo, and LTE

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Have a peek at this, one official looking two-sided sheet showing off basically everything you could possibly want to know about the brand new LG Revolution. This device will launch on the 26th of May right next to both the DROIDX2 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY – which one will you choose? We’re hoping to catch em all. This device will be only the third Android device to work with Verizon’s 4G LTE network and the first selection from LG. And it’s in all black instead of the silver we saw back at CES.

This device hasn’t seen a whole heck of a lot of changes since it was shown off at the mother of all tech shows, this 4.3-inch display having Android 2.2 device with LG’s User Interface, a 5-megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front. It’s got a 16GB pre-installed microSD card, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, HDMI-out, and wireless charging.

Wireless charging?! Hooray forever! This device appears to be a shoe-in for being the first to use Qi wireless charginve, making it clearly the best LTE device to be released thus far. No? Let’s take a look at the rest of the specs and see what we see. This device uses Bing instead of Google, has a battery they say will last 335 hours on standby, and its display is a 16.7M Color TFT LCD at 800 x 480 pixels. Remind you of anyone you know?

We’ll see how this sassy lady measures up against the T-Mobile G2x when the time comes, but for now, lets just salivate and wait. 

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NOOK Color Official Froyo Update: It’s Almost A Real Tablet Now, No Hacking Required

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The Barnes & Noble NOOK Color has been the e-reader of choice for many Android power users because of its hackability, making it easy to transform it into a full featured tablet. B&N must’ve taken note from the Android dev community, because an update has just been released for the NOOK Color that brings Froyo, apps, flash player, and more to this budget friendly device.
Before you get too excited, though, it’s not exactly what you think. There is no access to the Android Market, nor does it include any Google Apps. In order to keep the user experience consistent, B&N has its own set of proprietary libraries that developers must use when writing apps for the NOOK Color, so everything flows together within the NOOK ecosystem. Whether or not your favorite apps will be available on the NC is completely up to the developer, but according to Engadget there should be around 125 different apps currently available, with upwards of 5000 developers actively working on bringing more to the device.
There are also numerous updates to the reading experience, including improved animations, the ability to read in landscape mode, and the addition of videos and animations to books. The latter should prove to be convenient for how-to applications, such as cookbooks, but don’t expect to watch a feature film inside of your book. For the kiddies, there is a new feature being added to some books called "read and play" which brings simple games and interactive activities within the book.
Also included in this update is beta access to the social portal – a place where friends can share what they’re reading, comment, and even "lend" books to one another.
While this update brings many welcome features to most NOOK owners, I’m sure that the most savvy of us will still want to root, hack, and mod the NC to lovingly force it to do things that a full Android Tablet should do.
The update is scheduled to roll out to all devices in the coming weeks, but if you don’t want to wait that long, you can grab the update from here.
 

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