Samsung Introduces TecTiles NFC Tags

We’ve been hearing for years about NFC being the next big thing in the mobile arena, and Samsung has just doubled-down by introducing TecTiles reusable NFC stickers that, when touched with an NFC enabled phone, can perform nearly any action you can dream up.  Along with the release of the NFC stickers comes an app (also called Samsung Tectile) available free in the Google Play Market.  So is this really going to be a big thing in your mobile life?  Click through to find out…

So why are Samsung TecTiles so exciting?  First, the stickers themselves are re-writable up to 100,000 times.  They can perform not only a large number of actions, but multiple actions as well.  Here’s just a few of the actions they can perform:

• Make a Call
• Send a Text Message
• Show an Address or Location
• Foursquare Check In
• Facebook Places Check In
• Open a Web Page
• Share a Contact
• Update Facebook Status
• Start a Google Talk Conversation
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Launch an App

 The app allows configuring these actions, then writes those instructions to the sticker. Imagine creating a sticker that you put in your car (you can even put it right on your dock) that initiates a Bluetooth connection, opens Google Navigation and starts playing music.  You could put one on your nightstand that silences your ringer and sets your alarm, just by setting your phone down.  There really are endless possibilities.

TecTiles are available now, and cost $14.99 for a pack of five.  They’re available online from Samsung’s website, and will also be available in T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon stores.  The app is available now, and while it will install on any phone, you’ll need the NFC bits inside to make it work.

Instapaper Finally Makes Its Android Debut, And It’s Almost Amazing

Given Instapaper creator Marco Arment’s less-than-enthusiastic stance on Android, it didn’t seem like an Android version of his popular story-saving app would ever see the light of day. A handful of people have tried to bring the immensely useful service to Android with varying degrees of success, but Arment and mobile developer Mobelux have surprised us all by offering up their own official solution.

Yes, that’s right. Instapaper for Android has finally been released into the Google Play Store, where it can be yours for $2.99. Now the question changes from “when will it be released?” to “how well does this thing actually work?”

It’s worth noting right at the outset that the new Android version isn’t a one-to-one translation of the popular iOS app — notably missing is the ability to jump into a full screen view of a story, as well as the option to pore through featured stories culled from the day’s most frequently saved bits. Instapaper’s popular pagination options are absent as well, though to be honest, I’ve got no problem with just scrolling through a story.

While Instapaper fanatics may bristle at some of these omissions, the app works, and it works very well. In terms of design, Instapaper is simple to the point of being sparse, something that tends to be exacerbated by larger displays. Still, it’s clean and understated — in a sense, it’s perfectly suited to the core function of the app. Simply put, this version of Instapaper is meant to pull your saved stories to your device and display them for you with no additional cruft to get in the way. There’s also a tablet-specific view that I didn’t have much of a chance to muck around with, but it seemed remarkably similar to the iPad-optimized version of the app, down to the use of a two-column grid layout that stories live in.

Popping into a story proper reveals many of the same granular settings that its iOS counterpart is known for. It’s a snap to switch between each of the app’s three fonts, fiddle with line spacing, tweak screen brightness, adjust font size, and the like, making the reading experience very customizable.

All of those controls are nestled in a persistent option bar that runs along the bottom of the story screen, and I find it to be less of a distraction and more of a facilitator — the ability to like a story or pass it along to others via any of the networking apps on my Android phone is always just a touch away. Your mileage on this front may vary — in The Verge’s review of the app, Ellis Hamburger notes that using the app on a One X sticks users with a triple-whammy of navigation bars cluttering up the bottom of the screen, something my Galaxy Nexus thankfully managed to avoid.

As is the case with just about any 1.0 release though, there are a few hiccups. Occasionally when you enable dark mode — a feature that displays light text on a dark background — within a story and then exit it, the settings panel is similarly blacked out. You have to pop back into a story, turn dark mode off, and exit again if you actually want to see what options are at your disposal. It’s a minor glitch, and not one that seems to occur repeatedly, but it certainly made for a few puzzled moments.

In the end, even though it’s not a perfect release, most of the issues and omissions that pepper this first release don’t seem too complex to implement well (from my limited perspective, anyway). What really matters here is that the core functionality is present, and that bit works nearly as well as I had hoped — the rest will surely come down the line.

Hot Android To-Do List App, Any.DO, Comes To iOS And Web

Any.DO, the gorgeous to-do app for Android, has finally made its way to the iPhone and the web today. Developed by the team behind Taskos, one of the most popular to-do list applications on the Android Market, Any.DO launched last November backed by $1 million in angel funding, making a few iPhone users (ahem *clears throat*) jealous of something on Android for a change.

Besides the basics of t0-do list management, the app supports gestures, auto-predictive text, and voice-to-text recognition, all of which are packaged in easy-to-use and attractive interface.

Of course, the iPhone is a more competitive landscape than Android when it comes to these things. And being both pretty and useful are (more often) par for the course on iOS, not features to make one take note. (Look, I rocked a Nexus S for a year and a half, but my favorite Android apps let me hack away at the phone – they weren’t necessarily what I’d call elegant. Your mileage may vary.)

Plus, in the time since Any.DO’s original debut, the iPhone has seen new, buzzy-worthy to-do list makers appear, like the heavily-anticipated app Clear, which changed the traditional paradigm by ditching menus in favor of an all-gesture UI.

But unlike Clear, which goes for simplicity, Any.DO focuses on integrations with other services, like Facebook and Twitter, for example.

However, this is a team that knows how to build a product. The company’s Taskos app, launched for “research purposes” only, had topped a million downloads by the time of Any.DO’s arrival. And Any.DO grabbed half a million downloads in just 30 days on Android. It’s now used by “millions,” the company says.

For a seemingly simple to-do app, Any.DO has a ton of investors, including Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Blumberg Capital, Genesis Partners, Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, Felicis Ventures (Aydin Senkut) and Brian Koo, as well as advisors Erick Tseng, head of mobile products at Facebook, and Elad Gil, VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter. So perhaps you might guess that Any.DO’s bigger vision goes beyond the mere to-do item. The company is working towards a more intelligent system for helping people actually get things done, but details on what that really means are still sparse.

Also new today is Any.DO for Chrome, a plugin for managing to-do’s from the browser. Note that when you go to install Any.DO for iPhone, there’s another app by that name already there. Make sure you grab the right one: Any.DO is here.

Size Matters: Supply Chain Whispers Hint At 4.08″ 16:9 Display On iPhone 

It’s that time again. Well, who are we kidding? It’s always time for iPhone rumors. This one, however, seems to be the rumor that just won’t quit. So will the next-gen iPhone have a larger display? According to AppleInsider‘s supply chain source, Mingchi Kuo (an analyst with KGI), all signs point to yes.

He expects the iPhone to be taller, and switch from a 3.5-inch 4:3 display to a “4.08-inch in-cell IPS panel screen with a display resolution of 1,136 x 640 and 500-nit brightness,” at an aspect ratio of 16:9. If this is true, Apple will actually be lowering the bar for its Retina display status. The pixel density for the rumored display is 320 ppi, whereas current iPhone models sport a ppi of 326. Obviously this isn’t a huge drop, but I think it’s worth noting the concessions Apple may or may not be making to keep up with the competition (read: Android phones).

This stands to be the biggest change to the iPhone’s design to date, rivaled only by the jump between the 3GS and the iPhone 4, if it turns out to be real. That said, there’s quite a bit Apple will have to consider.

The company insists on ease-of-use as a cornerstone of every product. The major complaints with large screens is that they kill battery life and make one-handed actions more difficult. Apple won’t have this, which is why a 4-inch display is somewhat believable. It rubs right up against that “too big” line, which in my opinion sits at 4.3-inches. And even a 4.3-inch display is too big for some, but 4 inches should be comfortable to everyone from teenage girls to Occupy Wall Street protestors to lumberjacks. (You know, Apple’s core demographic.)

Now, Apple already gets an earful when it comes to battery life. Competitors are kind of kicking ass in the battery department when weighed against the iPhone (at least, lately). The Droid Razr Maxx: 3300mAh battery. The HTC Evo 4G LTE: 2000mAh battery. The Samsung Galaxy S III: 2100mAh battery. Granted, the Evo 4G LTE and the Galaxy S III are much larger devices, with 4.7-inch displays.

But the iPhone 4S? 1420mAh battery. And this report suggests the same story for the iPhone 5: ~1400mAh.

According to Kuo, there’s a point at which a display requires a “visibly larger” battery capacity, and that point is around 4.3-inches. However, if we assume that Apple will toss in a 4G LTE radio this time (which makes sense considering it’s now a proven technology, within the iPad no less) then Apple sticking to a ~1400mAh battery seems a bit off. Obviously a compromise between size and usability must be made, but battery life is one of the most important specs on a phone, so it’s at this point that I feel the research may be a bit misguided.

But let’s move on anyways.

Kuo also mentioned that the horizontal resolution would stay the same, at 640 pixels. This is to make sure legacy apps are still usable on the display, and also help app developers save on adapting their apps for a different aspect ratio. So, according to Kuo, legacy apps would be pillar-boxed if they aren’t optimized for the longer display, but if developers want to refine the apps for the new display they won’t have to tamper much with horizontal resolution, just vertical.

Just take a look at this image pulled from the research note:

Need To Pump Up Your iPhone Voice Recordings? The Pint-Sized iRig MIC Cast Is Now Shipping

The microphone in the iPhone 4S is pretty good — I have found it to capture excellent quality on all my consumer-ish recordings and videos. Of course, that is not to say it could not be improved.

When the iRig MIC Cast was announced at CES this year, I was pretty excited. I have gotten a lot of use out of the original iRig MIC and this miniaturized version seemed poised to make my travel recordings an even more portable affair.

Thankfully, it did not disappoint. The mic’s dual gain setting really extended the abilities of my iPhone for my consumer Video/Audio recordings, which is especially impressive considering the microphone is about the size of a half dollar. The new iRig also comes with a desktop stand to prop my phone while I’m recording, and I while didn’t use it too often, it could definitely come in handy for sit-down interviews and the like. Oh, and in case you felt some weird urge to do so, it works just fine when taking phone calls too.

While I am not sure what other non-iOS devices are actually supported, I was able to get it to work with things like the Korg Kaossilator 2 — a nifty bonus for sure.

What can I say, I am a fan of this little gadget in all of it’s portable glory. It’s shipping today and costs $39.99/€29.99. More info at www.irigmiccast.com

BlackBerry PlayBook Update Adds Improved Android Compatibility

The RIM PlayBook by just received a developers update that adds some interesting new Android functionality to RIM’s tablet. This new version now supports Android apps running in their own windows, improving compatibility with the general Android app universe.

From Crackberry:

Improved HTML5 support
Portrait support for Email, Calendar and Contacts
Improved folder support including IMAP folder support
Full device encryption is now supported, so that the whole device and personal partition can be secure.
Screenshots are now saved in lossless PNG format.
Each Android app will now run in its own window. This greatly improves the user experience and consistency among the other application runtimes.
Access to the Camera hardware is now supported for Android apps, allowing many more application types to work on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.
In-App Payment is now supported through the BlackBerry Payment SDK, so Android applications can include virtual items for sale in their applications.

This version is butting up against the incoming BB10 OS that will soon appear on phones and tablets, but, as the Verge notes, the BB10 PlayBook should be able to run apps written for previous OS versions.

Oddly, this version seems like a bit of a dead end but it’s nice to see Android functionality getting fleshed out more concretely.

T-Mobile’s Galaxy S III May Not Get A Facelift Before It Launches In The U.S.

When the Galaxy S and the Galaxy S II made their respective journeys to the United States, they lost a little something that international customers have enjoyed since the beginning: the physical home button.

According to some new images obtained by The Verge though, that era may be drawing to a close, as T-Mobile’s GSIII variant may sport that home button after all.

It may seem like a minor thing to get worked up over (because it is), but it’s a considerable shift from the four-capacitive-button days of yore. Those design changes were mandated by carriers, and if true, these new images may mean that Samsung is flexing their muscle as the most prolific smartphone manufacturer in the world. That could also mean that the models meant for other carriers will sport a similarly untouched design, and I get the feeling it won’t be long before they start popping up in the wild.

Though the device’s looks may not have changed, you can bet the internals are at least slightly different from the international model. Samsung Mobile chief J.K. Shin noted at the company’s London launch event that the North American variants would be 4G-capable, but that raises another question about T-Mobile’s version — will it have an LTE radio?

T-Mobile’s made it clear recently that they’re working on getting their own LTE network up and running, but it isn’t expected to go live until some time next year. Meanwhile, Verizon, AT&T, and even Sprint have either already lit up their LTE networks or are right on the verge of making it happen. T-Mobile could certainly try and pull a Sprint by releasing LTE-capable hardware ahead of the network actually going live, but I somehow don’t think they’re that bold.

It wouldn’t be the first time a T-Mobile Galaxy device would have its insides changed — when the three domestic GSII flavors were revealed last year, the T-Mobile version remained awfully mum about the device and went as far as locking their demo unit up in an acrylic cage so as not to be manhandled. While the AT&T and Sprint models both sported Samsung’s own Exynos processor, T-Mobile’s was later revealed to be running on a Qualcomm chipset that allowed it to take advantage of the carrier’s HSPA+ 42 coverage.

All that geekery aside, there’s still no official launch date on the books this little looker, but with a Canadian release slated for June 20 we can’t be too far behind. Here’s hoping Samsung has ironed those issues with their hyperglaze finish though, because the last thing they need is to launch some peculiar looking hardware.