There are already many LTE devices on Verizon’s network, and now they have added one more. The LG Spectrum is now available on sale from the carrier. The smartphone, which is aimed at the mid-range market, is coming with high-end specs including a beautiful HD screen.

The Spectrum features a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S3 processor, an 8 Megapixel rear camera capable of recording 1080p video, a front facing 720p camera for video calls, 16GB of storage, and 1GB of RAM, and an 1830mAh battery is included in the package.

But it’s coming with Android 2.3 and no hints regarding an upgrade to Android 4.0.  It features Bluetooth 3.0, but Bluetooth headset users would probably prefer BT 4.0 as it consumes much less power in standby mode.

The device’s main attraction is its large screen protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. Although it’s not as big as the one on the Galaxy Note, the 4.5 inch 720p IPS display might just be enough to attract you. And of course, the LTE device will take advantage of Verizon’s high speed network.

We are expecting to get the device soon for a hands-on experience so that we can judge it fully. But we encourage you to pay a visit to your nearby Verizon store to take a peek at that screen for yourself. And do let us know how you felt.

The device is coming with a price tag of $199.99 with a 2 year contract.

[Verizon]

ITProPortal.com is exclusively publishing these hands on set of walkthrough images of the yet-to-be-announced Sony Ericsson ’Nozomi’ Xperia HD mobile phone, which is due to be launched at the CES 2012.

The codename ‘Nozomi’ phone, which is set to be called the Xperia HD, will run Android ‘Gingerbread’ 2.3.7, with the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8660 chipset, which is also used in the HTC Evo 3D mobile.

As being sort of an HTC Evo 3D clone, with the main exception being its ultra high res screen (1280×720), this model just doesn’t strike me as something that extraordinary.

It is powered by a dual-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8660 chipset running at 1.5 GHz, but failing to show spectacularly fast Quadrant benchmarks. No slot for microSD cards in Nozomi, either.

Somewhat on the redeeming side, it does sport a 12 Mpix camera of untested quality and 32 GB of internal storage.

K91 is branded as the world’s first smart TV to run Android 4.0. The “smart” part of the equation is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor running Lenovo’s skinned Android 4.0.  This apparently offers a seamless combination of  VOD, Internet applications and traditional TV programs. Its TV 2.0.

The panel is full HD IPS at 240hz with SRS TruSurround. More “smart” functions provide voice control with natural language processing and speech recognition technology, allowing viewers to use voice commands to control the remote. Video interaction is even possible with the built-in 5MP webcam, which integrates face recognition technology for security benefits and advanced parental control. With cloud support from Lenovo’s branded “Personal Cloud”, consumers can access their favorite songs and videos with ease, share files between the TV and their tablet, smartphone or PC, and even control the TV via tablet and smartphone.  Looking at these, who needs Google TV now?

Lenovo claims that K91 Smart TV is available already in China and we haven’t heard it being around anywhere else, nor is it online just yet.

According to NotebookItalia, who got this leaked rendering, ASUS will officially announce a 7-inch version of its successful Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. The rendering makes it look like it’s running Android Honeycomb, and at launch time it’s quite possible, as no recent ASUS Android devices were launched with Ice Cream Sandwich just yet. Apparently it will sport the same mighty Tegra 3 processor as its bigger brother. However, here’s where this rumor gets quite unclear: a 7-inch tablet from ASUS was demoed at CES 2011 where it was called ‘ASUS Eee Memo Pad’ and was said to be based on a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2 GHz processor.  Some models of that Memo (or was it ‘MeMO’?) might even be set with glasses-free 3D screens, but it didn’t happen just yet.

Whatever the discrepancies between the two proposed pocketable  ASUS tablet prototypes, the same press photo leak source has its price point pinned at $299. Will it be based on Tegra 3, or Snapdragon S3, or even S4, will be established at CES 2012.

There were a lot of tablets announced at CES earlier this year and one of the units that may have flown under the radar is the Asus Eee Pad MeMO. After based on today’s confirmations, you might be a little more interested.

Yes, it was hiding in the shadows of stablemates the Eee Pad Transformer and Eee Pad Slider, but the Eee Pad MeMO is more than just a notepad and e-book reader. As it turns out, this 7-inch device will indeed ship with Android 3.0 Honeycomb right out of the box, despite running on a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 processor rather than the “reference platform” NVIDIA Tegra 2.

All sorts of other specs and features have now been confirmed by Asus as well. These include the microHDMI port, quad-band HSPA+ connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, microUSB (with Host support), 3.5mm headphone jack, microSDHC slot, GPS, 5MP camera, 1.2MP front-facing camera, gyroscope, g-sensor, light sensor, proximity sensor, and digital compass. We’re expecting a full gig of RAM and up to 64GB of storage capacity.

The world of seven inch tablets will quickly be heating up with updated versions of the Galaxy Tab, as well as the upcoming HTC Flyer, Dell Streak 7, and others. There’s no word on price, but the MeMO is said to survive 8 hours of video playback on a single charge, including support for full 1080p HD. The most interesting thing about this tablet is its sidekick; a mini-phone like device that connects to the MeMO via Bluetooth allowing you to control it, make calls and who knows what else, the guy in the video was probably handling it for the first time. It has a transparent display that does who knows what.

Remember when the first 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chips hit the scene and we amazed by having a “G” in the mobile CPU’s clock speed? And now NVIDIA Tegra2 is winning many hearts with its dual core wonders? Not to be outdone, the upcoming TI OMAP5 chips are going to boast four cores of processing.

“But the NVIDIA Tegra3 beat them to the punch!

True. The Tegra3 will do the quad-core thing, but “only” at up to 1.5GHz. The new OMAP5 platform will offer four cores going nutso at up to 2GHz. That’s supposed to offer up to 3x the processing power of the OMAP4 (which will power the BlackBerry PlayBook) while improving power consumption by 60%.

What’s interesting is that the four cores aren’t the same. You get two ARM Cortex-A15 cores (up to 2GHz) and two ARM Cortex-M4 cores. Combined, OMAP5 is said to support up to three QSXGA (2560×2048) displays at the same time.

Sure, that all sounds good on paper, but will it work in practice? That’s the bad news. Samples aren’t going to get shipped out to manufacturers until late 2011 with actual OMAP5-powered devices following in mid-2012. By then, Tim might have already Franken-welded four Tegra2 chips together for more power. (Grunts notwithstanding.)

[PhoneScoop]

What if you could maintain the exact same outward appearance for your phone while completely upgrading its internals? Rogue designer Antoine Brieux is exploring precisely this idea with his HTC Tube smartphone concept.

The phone itself is split into an outside shell and an inside “cartridge.” The real guts of the phone are found in the cartridge, which would effectively upgrade the processor, storage capacity, camera, and other necessary bits. The magnesium alloy shell then provides a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED display, HDMI port, and so on.

Brieux is envisioning three different cartridge levels. The Starter Edition gets an 800MHz Snapdragon CPU, Android 2.2 with HTC Sense, 8GB Flash, and a 3.2MP cam. The Smart Edition gets bumped to a 1GHz CPU, Windows Phone 7, 16GB Flash memory, and a 5.0MP cam with 720p video.

The granddaddy of them all, though, is the Ultimate Edition cartridge. It gets a 1.5GHz dual core Snapdragon with 64GB Flash, 12MP cam, 1080p video, and a dual boot Android 2.2 + Windows Phone 7 operating environment. Yeah, dual boot. I’m sure that’ll fly with HTC, Google, and Microsoft.

While the whole cartridge mechanism for the HTC Tube is certainly different, I very much doubt that we’ll be seeing anything commercially available with this kind of form factor any time soon.

[Yanko via Antoine Brieux]

So, now that we’ve gotten a really good look at the upcoming HTC Thunderbolt smartphone with its Verizon-happy 4G LTE connectivity, we want to take a closer look at the spec sheet to see if it really is all it’s cracked up to be. Some hearsay has revealed some new specs for the phone and, more likely than not, they’re probably too good to be true.

For starters, it has more or less been confirmed that the Thunderbolt will only have a single-core processor when it gets formally announced at CES. German blog HTC Inside, on the other hand, says that the Thunderbolt will have a dual-core Snapdragon 1.2GHz (MSM8960) CPU under the hood. The trouble is that this processor won’t really be ready for “sampling” until the middle of 2011. That means it won’t actually show up in consumer-ready devices until early 2012 at the earliest. The good news is that, when it does pop up in phones, it will be capable of PS3-level graphics.

HTC Inside also goes on to mention a five-megapixel front-facing camera and expandable storage up to 128GB. I don’t see why HTC would want such a high resolution cam in the front, at least for now, but the expandable storage could be a real possibility with the increasing affordability of microSDHC cards.

And for the record, Qualcomm is still having some trouble with its dual-core Snapdragons anyhow. That could be why Google is opting for NVIDIA Tegra 2 as its reference platform for Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

Update: HTC has run an ad in Rolling Stone, the ThunderBolt is confirmed.

[Android and Me]

It has been almost one whole year since we last heard of the Lenovo U1 and it’s only now that a real “hands-on” is being provided? Yes, I was able to fondle the alpha-level device at CES 2010, but it wasn’t exactly market ready.

Well, it turns out that Lenovo has not yet abandoned this contraption just yet and some real “first impressions” are being posted on the Internet. For starters, the standalone tablet portion is being dubbed LePad and the docking part is being called the U1 dock. Combined, you get the Lenovo U1 Hybrid.

The interesting thing is that a lot has changed since we saw this product at CES last year. The “new” 10.1-inch LePad gets a capacitive display, Google Android 2.2 (instead of the Linux-based Skylight), and the LePhone skin for colorful navigation. The guess is that Snapdragon has also been ditched in favor of NVIDIA Tegra 2, possibly as a pre-maneuver for Honeycomb support, but we can’t say for sure. And yes, it has dual cameras.

As far as the Lenovo U1 Hybrid dock is concerned, it seems to function in much the same way as we saw before, offering a full chiclet keyboard, a beefed up processor, and Windows 7. The unit available for the “hands on” was non-functional, though.

[Engadget]

Really? Adding in another core and bumping the clock speed can save battery life? The new ARMADA 628 SoC will use the third core clocked at 624MHz for less resource demanding applications, something like playing mp3s in the background, or push notification updates. Just to alleviate the faster clocking cores from managing menial tasks. Expect 3D 1080p graphics, video encoding and decoding, and get this: project images on multiple simultaneous displays at 2K x 2K resolution, sounds like a Kno no?

[Marvell]