3D smartphones will soon be a reality–if you live in Japan, that is. Two upcoming Sharp smartphones will offer a 3D-capable display. These two new Android powered phones, known as the Galapagos 003SH and 005SH, won’t just house any regular 3D screen. Instead, they’ll be based around an autostereoscopic 3D display developed by Sharp itself, which means that you’ll be able to view 3D content without the need for pesky 3D glasses. After all, who would want to wear 3D glasses just to use their smartphone?

But what 3D content will these portable devices have? Sharp detailed that a range of 3D movies and games will be made available for the smartphones. The game lineup will include the likes of Resident Evil (BioHazard), Megaman, and Konami Mobile Baseball titles. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, both devices will be capable of taking 3D pictures.

Beyond the devices 3D capabilities, both of the handsets will come with Android 2.2 (Froyo), and they’ll include a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 3.8-inch display, as well as the usual Wi-Fi and GPS capabilities.

It’s been a big week for phone leaks. First we saw the long-rumoured PlayStation phone, and now various sources have simultaneously leaked news of the impending launch of the Google Inc.’s Nexus Two – the sequel to the much-lauded but under-sold Nexus One, which launched back in January.

Nov. 8 is the date the launch is supposedly taking place – allegedly at a press conference in New York with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. Why Google has switched from HTC Corp. to Samsung as a manufacturing partner is at this point unclear – although it could have something to do with the close work the two companies have done together on the Galaxy S phone line and Galaxy Tab.

Have you ever wanted to overclock your rooted Droid X or Droid 2 but just couldn’t be bothered to decipher pages of detailed technical jargon?

Well, you may want to check out the DX/D2 Overclocker app which can be purchased for a sweet 99 cents.

The very reasonably priced app - which overclocks your phone on the fly - is also (eventually) slated to offer OC on boot, along with custom presets.

How to overclock your Droid for just 99 centsAlthough the above-mentioned overclocking app provides only a modest increase in speed, it should be noted that the folks over at Team DeFuse managed to (manually) rev the Droid X from a humble 1 GHz to a blazingly fast 2 GHz. 



Meanwhile, the Droid 2 was overclocked to a staggering 3 GHz from a base speed of just 1 GHz.



Hewlett-Packard Co unveiled its first product for the fast-growing tablet market, a $799 device running Microsoft Windows that is aimed at business customers.

HP’s Slate 500 attempts to replicate the PC experience in a tablet form, providing a contrast to rivals who have brought more of a smartphone feel to their devices. The Slate runs the same version of Windows 7 used by many companies on their standard PCs.

The tablet has a bigger price tag than competing products such as Apple’s iPad, which kick-started the tablet craze when it debuted earlier this year.

HP’s offering has an 8.9-inch, multi-touch-enabled screen, weighs 1.5 pounds and comes with 64 gigabytes (GB) of storage and a digital stylus pen. It gets five hours of battery life.

It comes equipped with Wi-Fi access but no built-in capability to connect to high-speed cellular networks, as rivals including the iPad, Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Tab and Dell’s Streak have.

Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday it is developing technology for a 3-D television that won’t require special glasses.

Company spokeswoman Yuko Sugahara confirmed such technology was in the works. But she declined to comment on a report in the Yomiuri newspaper that the Tokyo-based company plans to start selling the new TVs by the end of the year.

Mainstream 3-D TVs now on sale, such as those from rivals Panasonic Corp. and Sony Corp., require glasses. But there are already screens that don’t require glasses, mainly intended for store displays.

Dell Inc. said Tuesday its Aero smart phone is now on sale in the U.S. for $99 with a two-year AT&T contract.

The Dell Aero uses an older version of Google Inc.’s Android operating system than many competing phones on the market today. The Aero uses version 1.5, also called “cupcake,” while most phones now use version 1.6 or higher. Dell says it has done a significant amount of work adding features to the base Google system.

The Aero has a 3.5-inch touch screen and a 5-megapixel camera, and it has photo and video editing functions built in. Dell says the Aero can sync with Windows Media Player and music without copy protection from Apple Inc.’s iTunes.

Google and HTC are working together on a tablet-style computer to compete with Apple’s iPad, according to reports.

The tablet computer will run Google’s Chrome operating system, and will hit shops in November, possibly in time for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States when electrical goods are traditionally heavily discounted.

According to technology blog Downloadsquad, the tablet will be available on the Verizon mobile network in the United States.

The blog, which cites an anonymous source, says that the Google tablet is likely to be subsidised by Verizon, and therefore will be cheaper than Apple’s iPad. Although the source did not provide the blog with any information about the specifics of the rumoured tablet, Downloadsquad expects the device to be based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 platform, boast a 32GB solid-state drive and a built-in webcam.

Just because mobile phones are becoming more like small computers doesn’t mean you should have to do a lot of typing on them.

That’s the thinking behind the latest update to Google Inc.’s popular Android software for mobile phones.

The latest version of Android 2.2, released Thursday, includes 10 new voice commands that can be used to operate phones without using a keypad.

Although Google says about 200,000 Android-powered phones are being sold each day, not all of them are equipped with the 2.2 operating system, also known as Froyo. Google’s Nexus One phone already runs on Froyo, but users will need to download free updates through its Android Market. Motorola Inc.’s Droid 2, which went on sale this week, already has the necessary updates. The features are expected to be added to HTC Corp.’s Evo and Incredible phones when they get Froyo in the coming months.

Google’s new “Voice Actions” tool” enables people to dictate their text messages and e-mails. The voice recognition technology automatically translates the spoken words into text.

Phone calls can be made simply by speaking the name of a person or business. The feature can also find and play songs with spoken commands.

Consumer Reports tested three iPhone 4s and several other AT&T phones in their RF isolation chamber that simulates varying levels of signal from every carrier, and found that the iPhone 4 was the only handset to suffer signal-loss issues.

What’s more, CR directly says that its findings call Apple’s explanation of a miscalculated signal meter into question since the tests “indicate that AT&T’s network might not be the primary suspect.” CR found that simply putting duct tape over the bottom-left corner is enough to alleviate the issue — we’re guessing that’s Jony Ive’s worst nightmare — and says that while the iPhone 4 has the “sharpest display and best video camera” of any phone it’s tested, it simply can’t recommend the device until Apple comes up with a permanent and free fix to the antenna problem.

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. said Thursday it is introducing a new version of its higher-end Kindle at a lower price as competition among electronic-book readers intensifies.

The new version of its Kindle DX has a better screen that will display sharper images.

The large-screen reader, which Amazon hoped would catch on as a textbook substitute at universities, has free wireless over 3G cellular networks. It will be sold for $379, about 23 percent less than the $489 Amazon charged for the previous generation of the larger Kindle DX.

Amazon also said it improved the way the Kindle DX handles PDF documents, potentially solving a major complaint among students who tested out the Kindle in a pilot program over the past academic year. The original Kindle DX didn’t allow people to zoom in closer on PDFs, leaving graphics and small print difficult to decipher.

The new device can be pre-ordered immediately and will ship on July 7.

Could a blind person drive a car? Researchers are trying to make that far-fetched notion a reality.

The National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech plan to demonstrate a prototype vehicle next year equipped with technology that helps a blind person drive a car independently.

The technology, called “nonvisual interfaces,” uses sensors to let a blind driver maneuver a car based on information transmitted to him about his surroundings: whether another car or object is nearby, in front of him or in a neighboring lane.

The first slew of iPhone 4 complaints are in, among them that just holding the iPhone 4 a certain way can interfere with calls.

Apple Inc. redesigned the fourth generation of its smart phone, replacing sloping edges with a stainless steel band that wraps around the more squared-off sides. The metal band acts like a sturdy skeleton for the delicate phone, and it does double duty as the device’s antenna.

Some people said the iPhone 4 would disconnect mid-call when the phone was nestled in their hands in such a way that the lower-left corner of the device was covered.

While some iPhone owners reported no problems at all, others say the issue is intermittent: “It’s only every once and a while,” Lawrence Ho, 27, said outside the Apple store on New York’s Fifth Avenue on Friday.