The TheO Foam ball is a thick, protective foam ball with a cutout allowing you to cradle your iPhone or Android phone inside of it. It’s designed so that you play some games with the people you know IRL, not just online. The three games that are currently available are Hot Potato, Interrogo, and Bowling. The apps all use the phone’s accelerometer to function, though it’s unclear how they provide feedback while the ball is rolling along the ground or being passed around the room.

Price and availability haven’t yet been announced, but it sounds kind of interesting. The project was initially slated for funding on Kickstarter, but was unsuccessful. From the Kickstarter page, you can deduce that it will cost at least $25 with the three apps once it’s released.

[via Ubergizmo]

The Acer Cloudmobile was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress and it’s the first phone equipped with the Acer Cloud storage service. It’s meant to allow you to access media and documents stored on users’ home computers, even when the PC is sleeping. All photos taken via the phone are also automatically saved remotely onto your home computer.

The phone itself has a 4.3-inch HD touchscreen, and will run Android 4.1 on a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and comes HSPA+3G network ready. The Acer Cloudmobile phone is slated for release in late 2012.

[via designboom]

The ADzero is made from bamboo and it will probably be sold in design boutiques, not cell phone stores, since it won’t be mass-produced. The overall weight of this phone is half of an iPhone, despite its larger screen. Woodhouse is a design student at Middlesex University who was contacted by Jerro Lao, a tech entrepreneur after he saw some early concept images of the wooden phone.

The prototype runs Ice Cream Sandwich and will have access to the Android Market. Other than a mention of a built-in ring flash, there’s not much other detail about the specs of the final phone. A production version of the ADZero bamboo phone is expected to be launched in 2012 in both China and the UK. There’s no word on any North American distribution at this point.

[via Pocket-Lint via DVice]

The idea is to use her as a next gen mannequin. Geminoid-F is capable of basic emotions and behaviors that it uses to create expressions and actions based on it’s environment. You can expect her to smile, nod and move about a bit in her chair, probably fooling some passers-by into thinking she’s a real woman.

She might even yawn as you pass by. One thing she won’t do (or so I hope) is break the glass with her fist and pick you up by the neck, while signaling other android mannequins that it is time for the invasion. That would be bad.

[via Diginfo]

These watches come from a collaboration between Google and Modify Watches. Aside from these Android versions they also have watches that feature Google’s Chrome logo and the Google logo. So Google fans are well covered.

Modify Watches are built so you can mix-and-match faces and straps to create the watch the way you like it. You can buy one now for now for $59.95(USD) from the Google store. I like the Android mascot myself, but that seems a bit steep for branding my wrist with a no-frills watch. If you beg to differ, head over to the Google store and buy one.

[via Talkandroid]

The Infobar C01 (JP) looks pretty retro with its checkered keyboard beneath a full touchscreen. It’s powered by Android and measures a disproportionately tall 5.11 inches in height by 2 inches in width and under half an inch in thickness. It weighs 3.7 oz and its 3.2-inch screen has a 854×480 resolution. It has an 8 MP CMOS camera, USB and microSD ports. It’s Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and IR compatible. Since it’s designed for the Japanese market, it also comes with a digital TV tuner.

The phones will be available in Japan in February 2012 on the KDDI (JP) mobile phone carrier. Even if you do like its looks, it’s doubtful that you’ll ever be able to get one outside of Japan though.

[via designboom]

Polaroid’s latest digital camera, the SC1630, is an Android-powered smart camera, with a 16MP sensor as well as a 3× optical zoom (and 5× digital zoom). It also offers automatic face and smile detection, red-eye removal, color correction and geo-tagging of images.

The SC1630 packs a touchscreen display and Wi-Fi connectivity which allow you to easily upload your photos with a single button. The 3.2-inch screen (800×480 resolution) allows you to preview images nicely. In terms of storage, it can hold up to 32GB, via a microSD card – though it’s unclear if this will be included in the price.

It also offers all of the abilities normally associated with Android, such as web browsing, a calendar, email and app downloads. So basically, it’s a smartphone without the phone – and none of the carrier contracts that usually go with. The Polaroid SC1630 should be released this April and will sell for $299 (USD).

[via Ubergizmo]

The smartphone runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and has Gorilla Glass over the top to make it stronger. The screen is 4.3-inches wide and has 960 x 540 resolution. The processor is a dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4460. The smartphone runs an 1800mAh battery and should last a long time. The device is not that wide either at 64.8mm.

The P1S smartphone will be offered in white, black, and pink colors. The rear camera is an 8MP unit and the front is a 1.3MP camera. The rear camera can capture 1080p video. If this thing floats your boat, it will hit the US in April. What carrier will have it and how much it will cost are unknown.

Some good news for the gamers out there that have GTA III on their device, it appears that you can use those old PC mods and hacks on your smartphone or tablet. The game runs the PC code on iOS and Android apparently so the mod isn’t even complicated.

On iOS, it appears you need to jailbreak your device in order to install the mods. On Android, however, it’s a simple process of connecting the device to your computer, finding the Android/Data/com.rockstar.gta3/files/GTA3 directory and installing your mods. You can check out the video above to see how to do the hack. Give it a try and let us know if this works for you.

[via The Verge via Kotaku]

The case works exactly the same as the iPhone 4/4S version and has the same nine effects and filters. It just looks slightly different, with the wheel located more to the middle of the case because of the difference in the placement of the rear camera between the two phones. Note that the sample shots below are taken with an iPhone. Tsk, tsk. Lazy Holga.

Snap open your browser and head to Holga’s online shop to order the lens filter case. It’s a bit more expensive than the iPhone version at $28 (USD).

[via Engadget]

The gang at BlueStacks has compiled a bunch of data on users of Android and used that data to make up a composite image of Mr. Android for 2011.

The data shows that there is a 37% chance the Android user is wearing glasses and two-thirds of a chance he is clad in jeans. The Android guy has a 62% chance of being in some sort of relationship. He also has an 18% chance of having an unusually large head. The full-size image that puts all this stuff together is ginormous so you will need to check it out in full here so you can read all the facts and figures.

[via AllThingsD]

The handheld device runs Android 2.2, and features a 7-inch touchscreen display, at a resolution of 800×480 pixels. Other features include an ARM Cortex A9 processor and Mali 400 GPU, 512MB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi connectivity and an HDMI port to play games on your big screen.  There’s also a front-facing VGA camera and 2MP rear unit for video chat.

While it’s perfectly fine for Android games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies, it also plays retro games like Metal Slug and Super Mario 64. It’s not clear, but the S7100 may come with SEGA, Nintendo, Sony and other emulators pre-installed. Otherwise, you can always download and install them.

The JXD S7100 will cost you $139.99(USD), and comes in both white and black versions over at Etronixmart.

The 70b is an upgrade to the earlier Archos 70 tablet, adding Android 3.2 Honeycomb, and increasing the RAM to 512MB. The extra RAM will allow the machine to run faster and be smoother in use and navigation of menus. It’s also supposed to have an improved capacitive touch screen, with its resolution bumped up to 1024×600 from 800×480. In addition, the CPU has been sped up from 1.0 GHz to 1.2GHz, while flash storage remains at 8GB.

Other features include accelerated 3D graphics, Wi-Fi, HDMI output and a microSD card slot for expansion. The tablet will hit stores in January. What do you think? Does this sound like a better option than the somewhat gimped Kindle Fire to you?

[Press Release]

As mentioned told you last time, you can already get this game for iOS devices from the iTunes App Store for $5.99(USD).The Android version will arrive in early 2012.

The Dark Meadow looks like just such a quality title. A survivor-horror game, that looks like it came straight from a console. Phosphor Games Studios used the Unreal Engine 3 to up the graphics and quality of the experience.

The game takes place from a first person perspective, with limited movement to keep you on the right path. You have gesture controlled melee attacks and ranged weapons to deal with the monsters in the game. Right now the game is available on iOS devices for $5.99 (USD), and it will come to Android in the first quarter of 2012.

[via Ubergizmo]

These tablets will likely be very cheap for what they offer. Coby isn’t going all out with the details at this point and has simply stated that it will be offering five different tablets and that all of them will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The tablets will be offered in 7-inch, 8-inch, 9-inch, 9.7-inch, and 10-inch versions.

They will each have similar hardware features with up to 1GB of RAM, a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, and multitouch screens with WiFi. The tablets will also have up to 32GB of storage presumably via microSD or SD cards. Pricing and availability are unknown, but that info should land at CES in about a month.

I would imagine that the iPhone 5 will bring with it the $299 price point as well. If you were going to push $100 more down the throat of consumers, the Galaxy Nexus is the device to do it with. The smartphone will run Android Ice Cream Sandwich, also known as Android 4.0. It has a huge 4.65-inch Super AMOLED screen with 720p resolution, and 4G LTE connectivity. The Nexus is powered by a speedy TI OMAP 4460 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, and it has a lot more as well. It has NFC support, and even has a barometer built-in.

It looks like we will need to save up a bit longer for those fancy new handsets moving forward.

[via WSJ]

The Sleeve was officially unveiled on Facebook by Asus, and as you can see in the video, it has some angular indentations on it that are fold lines. The cover can be flipped back and folded on the lines, like origami, to make it into a stand to keep the tablet upright.

It can also be folded in a different method to prop the screen at a lower angle for typing too. The Sleeve attaches to the Transformer Prime in the same spot the keyboard accessory does, but snaps into the tablet instead of using magnets like the Smart Cover, There is no word on price or availability of the Sleeve yet.

Taking that into consideration, researchers from Italy’s University of Bologna and the Smartphone Sensing Group at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire have come together to develop the WalkSafe app that pays attention for you when you can’t.

The app makes use of the phone’s rear-facing camera and image recognition algorithms to warn to the preoccupied user. It can even detect which way the cars are facing in the road and whether or not they’re moving, for instance.

WalkSafe alerts the user of any potential threats through audible or vibrating alerts. I think the app is definitely an innovative one, but really, mobile phone users should be more responsible and not rely on the app to let them know that they’re about to be run over by some delivery truck headed straight towards them.

If you want to give WalkSafe a try, it’s available for free download over on the Android Market now.

[via PopSci via Dvice]

As if the 8-hour long drive wasn’t punishment enough, the eponymous bus can only go up to 45mph and ever so slightly veers to the right. You can’t just hold down the button that steers it to the left or spam the gas, otherwise the bus will drift off the road. And if you drive the bus off the road? You’ll be towed back to Tucson. In real time. Also you can’t pause the game. And people say Dark Souls is hard. Here’s a taste of this masochist’s wet dream, courtesy of YouTuber Phrasz013:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The game became popular when the sketch comedy group Loading Ready Run launched Desert Bus for Hope. A fundraiser for Child’s Play, every year the LRR crew subject themselves to the agony of playing Desert Bus in exchange for money. Now you too can join in on the suffering. Developer Amateur Pixels ported the game to both Android and iOS, with all proceeds going to Child’s Play as well. Of course you can just pay $0.99 to get the game and not play it. The way I see it, this is a new standard for measuring battery life. How far into the trip can your device – and you – last?

[via Touch Arcade]