The first episode of The BGR Show doesn’t premiere until May 31st, but we wanted to put together a little something to tease the show with Pharrell Williams — and it’s hilarious. We have some amazing segments lined up, and we would tell you about them but we don’t want to spoil it. The show will air weekly around 11:00 a.m. Eastern every Thursday on i am OTHER‘s channel beginning on May 31st. Make sure you subscribe to stay updated with our show schedule; you can find the show every week at the read link below, and of course, on BGR.com (and more places coming soon!).

Read

Over the past six years, BGR has grown into one of the most prominent destinations in the world for mobile and tech news. We have broken some of the biggest stories in tech and offered up some of the most honest opinions. But we’ve never done video. Today, we’re announcing The BGR Show, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with a long-time friend of mine, Pharrell Williams, to bring the show to his new YouTube channel, i am OTHER.

The BGR Show won’t be a boring show that looks at the technical aspects of cell phones. It’s a show that focuses on the fact that technology is now present in practically every aspect of our lives, and we’ll dive deep into this idea during exciting segments with manufacturers, celebrities, personalities, executives and more. We’re working with an amazing design and production team to develop the series and build out a huge BGR set for the show, and we can’t wait to show it to you.

In addition to working with Pharrell and Google, we went to Just Blaze for an original BGR theme song for the show, and we’ve partnered with Sennheiser on the audio front as well.

Episode 1 of The BGR Show will premier on May 31st. From then on you can catch our show every single week on Thursday on YouTube, and of course here on BGR. In the meantime, here the teaser for the channel can be seen below — stay tuned for a clip of Pharrell and BGR. Also feel free to drop us a comment below with some suggestions for segments and interviews you’d like to see on the show.

P.S. You will notice a huge new personality for BGR roll out onto the site and elsewhere in the coming weeks, but that’s for another time.

Behold the Ghost of Palm Past. Earlier this week, industry watchers got to relive the rise and fall of webOS as Research In Motion gave the world a brief look at a gorgeous new smartphone platform while failing to convince anyone that it can succeed in a market dominated by Apple and Google. RIM’s stock plummeted from a high of $14.62 earlier this week to the $11-range as a result. Then, on Thursday, Samsung took the wraps off its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III. The impressive smartphone’s design was described as having been inspired by pebbles that had been smoothed be the flow of water in a river. There was once another smartphone with a design inspired by river rocks, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

To make Samsung’s Galaxy S III announcement even more Palm-like, the South Korean vendor even aired a short promotional video featuring a somewhat creepy woman discussing the new phone. Granted, she didn’t appear to be hallucinating at the time, but the similarities between this promo and Palm’s uncomfortably pale spokeswoman were definitely there.

Of course Samsung certainly is not where Palm was in 2009, and it isn’t where RIM is today. Samsung is the No.1 smartphone vendor in the world, and its mobile business is pushing the company’s profits to new heights.

But despite a big-budget press conference featuring a live orchestra and an Olympic Games sponsorship, the Samsung Galaxy S III wasn’t met with overwhelming enthusiasm, as Samsung had undoubtedly hoped.

The Galaxy S III is an impressive phone. It features a quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos processor, a gigantic 4.8-inch high-definition Super AMOLED display and an ultra-slim case that is among the thinnest in the world. Even still, it’s just not that exciting.

The design looks to be a less impressive take on HTC’s One X, opting for cheap plastic in place of HTC’s unibody polycarbonate case. Samsung’s “S Voice” voice-command feature is a dumbed down version of Siri, and AllShare is all too familiar. Some might say Samsung’s new TouchWiz interface atop Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich can’t match the sleek look and feel of HTC’s Sense 4, and the Galaxy S III’s new camera software is a clear improvement over previous-generation Samsung handsets, but it falls well short of matching HTC’s Image Sense software and the new camera hardware found on its One-series phones.

The biggest winner on Thursday afternoon may very well have been HTC.

Samsung’s new smartphone will launch on nearly 300 carriers in the coming months, and it will be a top seller. Samsung mobile boss JK Shin on Thursday said that the company aims to sell 200 million smartphones in 2012, and the way things are looking right now, this is a very real possibility — Samsung shipped an estimated 44.5 million smartphones in the first quarter, and its new flagship phone won’t even begin rolling out until later this month.

There is another vendor that should be doing everything in its power to make sure Samsung doesn’t meet that goal, however, and that vendor is HTC. HTC had a record run in 2011 that was abruptly halted when Apple launched the iPhone 4S. The Taiwan-based smartphone company has been sliding since then, and its profit plummeted 70% in the first quarter this year.

HTC responded with three smartphones. Three fantastic smartphones that marry cutting edge technology with sleek designs and high quality materials. We’ve seen what a company can do with just three smartphones, but products alone won’t right this ship. HTC might be well-served to take a page from Apple’s book and double, triple or even quadruple down on marketing. No consumer electronics company spends more money marketing its gadgets than Apple, and perhaps not entirely by coincidence, no consumer electronics company in the world makes as much money as Apple.

The HTC One S — one of the most gorgeous smartphones I have ever held — is now available on T-Mobile, a carrier in desperate need of a hit. Or is it? Did the One S even launch? Is T-Mobile selling it? For every HTC One S commercial on TV, I see 20 commercials featuring the T-Mobile girl decked out in leather riding around on a crotch rocket while on-screen text talks up T-Mobile’s 4G network. Maybe it’s because I’m in a small market (New York) and HTC and T-Mobile are hitting larger markets harder with the One S.

And is the One X launching this Sunday on AT&T? I know AT&T sells the iPhone and the carrier is making sure as many people as possible are made aware of Nokia’s Lumia 900 thanks to the Finnish vendor’s deep pockets, but HTC’s One X will hardly be a contender at AT&T — which sells more smartphones than any other carrier in the all-too-important U.S. market — unless HTC puts its money where its mouth is.

Maybe HTC is banking on Sprint’s version of the One X, the HTC EVO 4G LTE, which is an amazing LTE phone with no LTE network to support it and a back cover that might invoke your gag reflex.

There is a window, and it is open. HTC got a head start on Samsung’s Galaxy S III and its One-series smartphones have everything it takes to find success… if wireless subscribers are made aware of their existence more effectively and aggressively.

That window may slam shut this summer when the Galaxy S III launches, and it may have iron bars bolted over it this coming fall when Apple launches its next-generation iPhone. In the meantime, HTC has little time to spare if it hopes to seize this opportunity and become a smartphone leader once again.

During the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009, a struggling smartphone company that had once helped shape the mobile industry unveiled its next-generation platform. It was gorgeous. The design was unique and appealing, the gesture-based controls were smart and intuitive, and the company’s new smartphone operating system offered a breath of fresh air in an industry dominated by just two major players, Apple and Google.

On August 18th, 2011, less than three years after this promising new platform was unveiled, it was effectively laid to rest.

During the annual BlackBerry World conference on Tuesday, a struggling smartphone company that had once helped shape the mobile industry unveiled its next-generation platform. It was gorgeous. The design was unique and appealing, the gesture-based controls were smart and intuitive, and the company’s new smartphone operating system offered a breath of fresh air in an industry dominated by just two major players, Apple and Google.

Yes, history is repeating itself.

There are too many comparisons between Research In Motion today and Palm in late 2008 and early 2009 to count. Ignoring the similarities between Palm and HP’s webOS platform and BlackBerry 10 is ignoring the obvious: a sleek UI that deviates from industry leaders and innovates in several key areas, sky-high ambitions, aspirations of pushing the platform beyond smartphones and onto various other products, and a seemingly impossible lead to overcome. RIM is in a much better place than Palm was at that time, of course, with a much larger user base, better performance and more resources at its disposal. Despite these advantages, however, both of these stories may end up sharing the same final chapter if RIM can’t find a way to tip the scales in its favor.

New chief executive Thorsten Heins took the stage on Tuesday and showed the world an operating system that looks absolutely nothing like BlackBerry 7. This is a very good thing. Based on RIM’s PlayBook OS, BlackBerry 10 appears to have the fit and finish of a modern mobile platform at this early stage. The UI is a complete overhaul compared to RIM’s current smartphone OS, and while Heins’s preview was very brief, we saw a number of exciting new features unveiled.

RIM showed us an interesting take on predictive text input that places words above various keys lying in the path of letters the user might type. A simple flick gesture will then complete the word. This solution is more elegant and logical than existing options that place a list of word recommendations across the top of the virtual keypad, and it is nice to see RIM innovating in a space it led for so long.

The camera software in BlackBerry 10 is fascinating as well. RIM’s next-generation smartphones will capture a series of photographs in the background as the user snaps an image. This will allow users to cycle regions of the image forward or backward in time to correct closed eyes or alter other aspects of a photo.

The problem, however, is that features like these won’t sell phones, regardless of how innovative and exciting they might be.

These features are a small piece of a massive puzzle that must be arranged in just the right order to allow a third player to emerge and succeed in today’s market. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have tremendous momentum, proven ecosystems and developer support, widespread carrier support and massive marketing budgets helping to sustain their success.

To say RIM has its work cut out for it is an understatement of monumental proportions. Plainly put, right now is likely the worst time in smartphone history to launch a new platform.

Apple and Google lead in the smartphone platform race by a staggering margin, and Nokia and Microsoft have a head start in terms of using innovation, a spectacular product and boatloads of cash in attempt to establish a successful third platform. And in terms of smartphone profits, that’s a two-horse race as well right now.

At some point in the coming years, other platforms will undoubtedly emerge and find success in the smartphone space. The odds are not in a contender’s favor today, however, as Apple and Google are both at the top of their game. To make matters somehow even worse for RIM, its first BlackBerry 10 smartphone will likely launch in the very same month as Apple’s next-generation iPhone, which BGR expects to feature a complete redesign when it is released this fall.

BlackBerry 10 is shaping up to be an impressive platform, and we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. It looks elegant, well thought-out and very powerful — just like webOS. Whether or not RIM can avoid a similar fate for its mobile platform remains to be seen, but unfortunately, we haven’t been shown anything compelling or significantly differentiated thus far that suggests this will be the case. For RIM’s sake, and for the sake of smartphone users everywhere who are hungry for a viable new platform, let’s hope that changes.

I sat at my computer in amazement a little earlier. Most of me knew that RIM is too damaged and too slow to pivot, and just too out of touch with its customers to know it actually has a chance. But, there was this small part of me that was genuinely excited for BlackBerry World’s announcements. Then I saw Thorston Heins start off the company’s most crucial keynote ever with Salesforce and Cisco.

This company has not changed, and won’t change. The parts of BlackBerry 10 demoed are slick — capturing a series of images and combining different elements from each one before you save a photo seems genuinely incredible, though how is that done, with an EDoF camera, so no autofocus? What we saw wasn’t truly innovative, though. It wasn’t compelling enough, and it’s unfortunately too late to try and gain enough traction and support for a third mobile ecosystem.

RIM is a company that has failed to deliver for the last eight years, and it doesn’t deserve another chance to mess it up. My live-tweets are embedded below so you can follow along to my instant (rambling) thoughts.

Also of note: RIM declined to make its BlackBerry 10 Alpha device available for BGR. Coincidentally, two publications that had early access to the smartphone also have advertising campaigns from BlackBerry running.

honestly, yes, it’s possible RIM can fuck up a live stream.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

this is so terrible.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

same shit, same shit. security. infrastructure. business.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

yes, when your company is dying because you missed the consumer boat, your first guest should be salesforce.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

oh, look, cisco is on stage now.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

camera is dope as fuck

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

probably wont work well though and will take 90 seconds to power on.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

everyone complaining about me complaining, just remember there are less and less of you every day.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

this is very simple. this company has failed to ever deliver in the last 8 years.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

also they had been working on blackberry 10 for how long? 3 years and we get 3 little demos?

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

sorry 2 years ago they acquired QNX.

— Jonathan S. Geller (@boygenius) May 1, 2012

Apple released its third-generation iPad on March 16th and I purchased mine one day later on the 17th. There were no lines at my local Best Buy when I went to buy the new model. In fact, there were still more than 100 new iPads in stock when I picked up my iPad more than 36 hours after it was released. The store was eerily quiet. It felt nothing like an Apple launch.

Of course we learned just a few days later that a lack of demand was certainly not to blame for the surplus of inventory; after five years, Apple had finally managed to meet demand with a mobile product at launch. The Cupertino, California-based company sold more than 3 million third-generation iPads during the tablet’s first four days of availability, making the new iPad Apple’s second biggest product launch of all time behind the iPhone 4S, which sold more than 4 million units during its debut weekend.

I have never been an iPad user. I took possession of a first-generation iPad out of necessity — I had to know what I would be reporting on for the year to follow — but I rarely touched the tablet unless I had to test a new app or cover something else having to do with Apple’s slate. Light-duty media tablets simply did not appeal to me, and I maintained my indifference toward the category for the two years that followed. I have a drawer full of smartphones with screens that vary in size from 3.5 inches to 5.3 inches, an eReader, a lightweight MacBook Air laptop and a Dell desktop PC. I’m covered.

Even the BlackBerry PlayBook, my one-eyed man in the country of the blind, has sat untouched for several months since I purchased a Nook Touch from Barnes & Noble. While PlayBook OS 2.0 has brought a number of much-needed improvements to the device, reading eBooks was really the only function I could find that I continued to enjoy more on a tablet than on a laptop or smartphone. That experience is infinitely better on the Nook though, and my BlackBerry tablet has been boxed as a result.

So I bought a new iPad, and these are my thoughts after having spent the past month with it.

As was the case when Apple released its first- and second-generation iPads, reviews of the third Apple tablet were overwhelmingly positive. Despite conspiracy theories that run rampant on enthusiast forums and in the comments sections of news sites, this is not because of some elaborate scheme among the media and technology blogs to give Apple positive coverage. No, the truth is far less scintillating and scandalous: Apple makes products people like.

BGR reviewed the iPad in March and Editor-in-chief Jonathan Geller said the only real competition the new iPad has comes from its predecessor, the iPad 2, which is currently available for just $399. While low-end slates like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet have been well received, I agree that these are not iPad competitors and I conveyed as much in my review of Amazon’s tablet last year. Apple CEO Tim Cook then confirmed the notion this past January, stating on an earnings call that the Kindle Fire had no impact whatsoever on iPad sales.

I am on record numerous times stating that media tablets have no place in my life. My opinion was that tablets, and the iPad specifically, do many things well but nothing as well as as one of several other devices I already own. You can watch videos on an iPad, but I would rather watch on a TV. You can work on an iPad, but I would rather use a notebook or desktop computer. You can quickly maneuver through dozens of gorgeous apps on an iPad, but I have smartphones packed to the brim with great apps. You can read books on the iPad, but I have a Nook Touch that lasts for more than a month on a charge, and is much lighter and more comfortable to hold than the iPad. For everything the iPad does, I already own something that does it better.

This is no longer the case.

Apple’s new tablet isn’t magical, but it certainly is amazing. The hardware is a feat of design and engineering that has no equal in the tablet space. Sleek and smooth, the case on the new iPad is very similar to the previous model, though it is slightly thicker to make room for a massive 11,560 mAh battery and a few other new components. The new dual-core A5X processor with quad-core graphics offers significant performance improvements compared to the iPad 2, which was already impressive, and iOS is as smooth as a modern mobile operating system can be.

But the new iPad won me over due to what essentially boils down to two things: the Retina display and the talent of third-party iOS developers.

Countless adjectives have been used to describe the Retina display on the new iPad. Amazing. Fantastic. Brilliant. Gorgeous. Vivid. Beautiful. Stunning. They’re all accurate.

The 9.7-inch, 2,048 x 1,536-pixel panel on the iPad offers better-than-Blu-ray resolution at a class-leading 264 pixels per inch. The pixel density on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is 149 pixels per inch, and while such comparisons are meaningless due to the user’s position relative to a television, a 42-inch HDTV with 1080p resolution offers 52 pixels per inch.

More than pixel counts, brightness measurements or any other specs on paper, the iPad’s Retina display is an experience. Nothing on a widely available consumer electronics device even comes close to offering the experience afforded by this amazing screen, and it may be some time before anything does. The color reproduction and clarity make staring at the Retina display like looking through a window, but the user has the ability to touch and manipulate the items that exist on the other side.

The iPad’s Retina display creates a new reality that the user holds in the palm of his or her hand — which brings me to apps.

Our world would be a very different place if Steve Jobs and Apple’s top executives had stuck to their original plan and confined third-party developers who wanted to address iOS to the Web. Apple’s mobile devices, and all mobile devices, would be infinitely less useful and a $20 billion industry responsible for creating more than 466,000 jobs to date would not exist.

The things these talented people have created for iOS are simply breathtaking. While fantastic apps exist for Android, Windows Phone, webOS and other platforms, the cream of the crop on these operating systems does not measure up to the look, feel or performance of top iOS apps. And on the third-generation iPad, the gap is significantly greater than it has ever been before.

Even apps from top developers that exist on multiple platforms offer far more attractive and often more enjoyable experiences on iOS, and especially on the iPad. Look at Netflix, Evernote, Hulu Plus, ESPN ScoreCenter, TED, Kobo, Pulse, Adobe Photoshop Touch or any one of a hundred other popular apps. These applications exist for the iPad and for Android tablets, but the difference between performance — and often, the look and feel — on the iPad and on Android devices is painful. There are several root causes of this disparity, but none of them matter even a little bit to the end user. All that matters is the experience.

These differences grow even more vast with the new iPad. Things aren’t just better on the iPad than they are on other tablets, they’re completely different. The impact of this next-level visual element cannot be overstated.

And the best apps the iPad has to offer aren’t just a cut above the rest now, they are jaw-dropping. There is nothing else in the world that lets people take in news and other content like Flipboard. There is nothing widely available to the mass market that lets people sketch and translate ideas onto “paper” like Paper by FiftyThree. Nothing even approaches these experiences. Not on a tablet, not on a smartphone and not on a PC.

This brings me back to the competition. On top of everything else, the third-generation iPad shows us exactly why Apple’s rivals are floundering and will continue to flounder unless they readdress the market from a smarter angle.

Apple’s competition has effectively gotten nowhere with their efforts to profit from the media tablet market Apple created. The first round of Android tablets was a bust because the user experiences these devices afforded were awful. Vendors scrambled to launch tablets similar to the iPad and the smartphone platform on which they based their efforts did not translate well at all to larger devices.

The second round of Android tablets offered a much better user experience, however these devices bring nothing new and desirable to the table where mass-market consumers are concerned. There is no valuable differentiation for average users, only a more complex and sometimes confusing interface, a weaker assortment of applications and a user experience that cannot match the iPad.

We’ve seen a few success stories, but to call them moderate is kind. With just a pair of niche devices as the exception — the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet — Apple sold more iPads during the new model’s debut weekend than most competing tablets will sell in a quarter, half or even a year.

Tablet makers are doing it wrong.

Now, the situation stands to get even worse. Vendors have been unable to create a tablet experience that consumers are willing to get behind en masse, so they now plan to compete not with products but with pricing. Companies have seen the success enjoyed by Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire, a specialized device, and they now hope to bolster sales by launching cheaper tablets. Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab models are about to hit the market with trimmed price points, and Google itself is said to be readying an own-brand tablet that could cost as little as $149. These devices may or may not perform well in terms of sales, but my concern lies elsewhere.

This path leads only to compromise, certainly not to innovation.

Why am I being so hard on Android tablets and the companies that build them? Is it because I do not believe top vendors like HTC and Samsung can compete with Apple in the tablet space? Is it because I enjoy seeing them fail? Quite the contrary, it’s because I want to see Apple’s competition succeed.

Apple’s new tablet is amazing, and it has proven to me that a tablet can indeed offer real value and utility where smartphones and traditional computers cannot. But the iPad is only one vision of a tablet.

I don’t want to see companies like Samsung and HTC try and fail to replicate Apple’s vision, and I certainly don’t want to see them do it repeatedly. I want to see them create their own unique visions of what a media tablet might be, and I want to see them launch products that are worthy of our attention — not because these new devices are like a cheaper iPad or like an open-source iPad, but because they are well-designed, well-made, useful and unique.

I want a tablet market, not an iPad market.

Instagram is a hugely popular social network centered around sharing retro images with friends, and while it continues to add users by the millions, it will likely soon see a somewhat sizable defection in light of recent events. Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday announced that Facebook will acquire Instagram for $1 billion. The deal will make Instagram’s small team rich and give the app exposure to millions of new users, but it will also bring a fresh round of privacy concerns that have already begun to surface. For those who avoid Facebook and its suite of services, deleting an Instagram account couldn’t be easier: users can simply visit the company’s account removal page, log in, and select a reason for their account removal requests from the drop-down menu. As it turns out, “privacy concerns” is the very first option.

The iPhone’s unprecedented success stems from the combination of multiple factors, not the least of which are Apple’s industry-leading design prowess and its ability to make software that appeals to enthusiasts and mass-market users alike. The culture and hype surrounding Apple products doesn’t hurt either, of course. Where the overall experience is concerned, Apple wisely created a scenario that gives it control of both hardware and software, removing carriers from the equation to an extent and ensuring the end user enjoys the experience Apple envisions without any substantial impediments. Despite this ideal scenario, some industry watchers maintain that fragmentation is unavoidable to some degree, and this issue exists in the iOS ecosystem just as it does with Android.

In the case of Google’s mobile operating system, a number of factors cause fragmentation. For one thing, Android is open source and key partners such as Samsung, HTC and LG modify the OS in a number of ways. While proprietary OS enhancements do not necessarily have a direct impact where fragmentation is concerned, they do slow the development process at the vendor level, thus increasing the amount of time users must wait to receive updates.

Industrial and graphic designer Chris Sauve recently published an in-depth analysis of Android fragmentation, and he determined that while Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was unveiled in late 2011 and Android 5.0 Jelly Bean is coming later this year, 2012 is actually the year of Gingerbread, which was unveiled 15 months ago in late 2010.

Conversations surrounding whether or not iOS is fragmented date back several years and persist to this day, and Sauve revisited the issue of fragmentation in March. This time, however, he looked at the issue as it may or may not apply to Apple’s mobile platform.

Using data points obtained from 50 different mobile software developers, Sauve analyzed iOS version adoption over the past 21 months since iOS 3.0 was introduced.

He also looked at iOS adoption relative to each version’s launch to see how quickly each build was adopted by end users.

Finally, this data was plotted against Sauve’s earlier Android adoption data.

Complaints of fragmentation in Apple’s mobile ecosystem were most prominent in early- and mid-2010, and iOS 3.0′s adoption rate shows us why. Since then, however, the adoption rate of Apple’s major new OS builds has been remarkable.

“iOS 5 captured approximately 75% of all iOS users in the same amount of time it took Gingerbread to get 4% of all Android users,” Sauve wrote in his analysis on pxldot. “Even more astounding is that 15 weeks after launch iOS 4 was at 70% and iOS 5 was at 60% while Ice Cream Sandwich got to just 1% share at the same age. If there were any question as to whether iOS had a less fragmented ecosystem than Android, the past two charts provide a fairly definitive answer.”

Sauve continued, “iOS devices have, on average, reached 10% version share 300 times faster than Android versions, 30% share 19 times faster, and 50% share 7 times faster.”

The adoption rate of future major iOS builds will likely be even more impressive thanks to the introduction of an over-the-air update mechanism Apple added in iOS 5. With iCloud backing up data, on-device notifications when updates become available, and the requirement of connecting to a PC to update no longer a factor, the major barriers standing between mass-market users and software updates have been eliminated.

This ensures that users have access to the most current iOS features as quickly as possible, and it also means developers don’t need to worry about old iOS versions as much while they shift focus to new builds.

Android phones have never been as impressive as they are today. They have never been as responsive, as slim or as powerful. Their displays have never been more vivid or more stunning. Their data speeds have never been as fast. Competition is now hotter than ever before in the smartphone market and consumers are reaping the benefits. At its core, each and every new smartphone that launches is an engineering feat that simply could not have existed a few short years ago. And yet as amazing as the current crop of smartphones might be, there has probably never been a worse time in Android’s brief but storied history for savvy users to buy a smartphone.

A quick glance through the smartphone catalogs of each of the four major wireless carriers in the United States reveals a terrific array of Android handsets. There is certainly no shortage of gigahertz or gigabytes, and spec sheets in general have become laundry lists of cutting-edge technology. More importantly, of course, this new breed of Google-powered phones offers performance that is far more responsive and fluid than previous generations of handsets. But as impressive as these devices are, right now is a horrible time to buy any of them.

Things are about to get a whole lot better.

For tech savvy smartphone users, committing to a two-year contract is brutal. Mobile technology moves so fast that smartphones can seem outdated just months after they launch. While this trend is bound to continue, the degree to which new generations of Android phones outdo their predecessors will always ebb and flow. Handsets have been improving at a somewhat modest pace for the past year or so, but the next crop of smartphones to hit store shelves will represent a huge leap forward rather than a few short steps.

Two leading smartphone makers, Samsung and HTC, are on the verge of launching next-generation devices that will put today’s high-end handsets to shame. HTC has already unveiled its new One-series phones, and the two high-end models it showed off at Mobile World Congress are game-changers, plain and simple.

The HTC One X is the Taiwan-based company’s flagship smartphone for the first half of 2012, and it features a 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, a 4.6-inch 1,280 x 720-pixel Super LCD 2 display, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for 720p video chats, 1GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage, embedded 4G LTE and Sense 4.0 on top of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. All that technology, mind you, is squeezed into a gorgeous 9.27-millimeter-thick unibody polycarbonate case. The U.S. version of this handset will feature a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and 16GB of internal storage, but the impact of this “downgrade” on the user experience is negligible — the phone is still lightning fast and beyond smooth.

HTC’s One S is a mid-range smartphone, though the term “mid-range” is used very loosely in this case. The device sports a 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED display, a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, an amazing 8-megapixel camera, 16GB of internal storage, Sense 4.0 and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, all packed within an even more slender 7.9-millimeter case made of Micro-Arc Oxidized aluminum.

While Samsung hasn’t yet unveiled its next-generation flagship smartphone, a series of exclusive BGR reports paint a fairly comprehensive picture of the Galaxy S III. To start things off, we can expect the most stunning display ever to be used on a smartphone. This high-definition, 1080p-resolution, 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display will be to smartphones what Apple’s new Retina Display is to tablets. Toss in a 1.5GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos processor, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, 4G LTE, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and a sleek ceramic case, and you’ve got one of the most remarkable mobile devices the world has ever seen.

In short, there probably hasn’t been a worse time than right now to buy a new Android phone and get locked in to a new two-year contract.

These next-generation Android phones will set a new precedent, and handsets that launch for the subsequent six to nine months will be playing catch-up. The chips within these new smartphones are faster, smaller and they consume power far more efficiently than the silicon that came before them. And while I haven’t yet had the opportunity to test the upcoming Galaxy S III, I have handled the One X and One S, and I can confidently say that they offer an end-to-end experience that is significantly better than what we see on the market today. The cameras alone, which are powered by a dedicated chip and are capable of capturing a RAW 8-megapixel image and returning to a ready state in just 0.7 seconds, are worth the wait.

These new smartphones will be slimmer, sleeker and more capable than anything on the market today, and they will still tout better battery life and more impressive performance. With HTC’s handsets ready to begin launching next month on AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, and the Galaxy S III set to be unveiled in April or May, Android fans would be wise to sit tight for now.

Late last summer, I wrote an article titled Dear tablet makers: You’re doing it wrong in which I shared my view on what I believe to be one of the biggest problems currently facing tablet vendors. In this article, I postulated that most Android tablets failed to make a splash because, in a nutshell, they bring nothing new to the table. Of course Android offers a vastly different user interface and user experience as compared to Apple’s market-leading iPad, but in terms of true differentiation — unique and desirable features offered to tablet buyers that cannot be found on the iPad — Android tablets have historically been lacking.

This problem, I believe, stems from the early days of Android tablets. Everything has been rushed. The first round of Android tablets ran Gingerbread and, as far as user experience is concerned, it was a disaster. Hindsight is 20/20 and I have spoken off the record with executives at several consumer electronics companies who expressed remorse after having rushed these slates out the door. What’s done is done, however.

Unfortunately, the trend continued with early Honeycomb tablets. Android 3.0 offered the first Android experience that was created specifically for tablets. The UI was designed for larger displays and it was vastly improved compared to Gingerbread. But it still felt rushed.

BGR stated as much on a number of occasions, such as in our review of LG’s T-Mobile G-Slate. “Android 3.0, or ‘Honeycomb’ as Google affectionately calls it, is a stopgap build of the Android operating system,” I wrote at the time. “I am not implying that this version of the Android OS is a poor effort on Google’s part, I’m simply stating that it seems like a rushed effort intended to tide us over while Google prepares to put its best foot forward.”

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is still not the answer. While the UI has been further refined and new features have been added, ICS still fails to offer a truly differentiated experience. Of course Android affords a number of features iOS does not, and of course it provides flexibility that Apple’s closed platform never will, but true differentiation that appeals to the mass market is still not a part of the picture.

As it turns out, the few Android tablets that do offer some differentiation, such as Asus’s Transformer, have been well received. Unlike many of its rivals, Asus took it upon itself to create unique features where there were none. Rather than simply build a shell for Google’s tablet OS, Asus built a convertible slate that docks with a keyboard to create a netbook of sorts. Asus may have jumped the shark with its new Padfone tablet/smartphone hybrid, but the company clearly recognizes that acting as nothing but a vessel for Google’s platform and slapping on a thin UI layer is, for the most part, and exercise in futility.

At its core however, the user experience afforded by Android tablets — the look, the features, the apps, the hardware — does not deviate enough in the eyes of the general consumer. And with a few exceptions, namely Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet, Android tablets can’t beat the iPad in terms of pricing, either. Imagine the IWC Big Pilot and the Archimede Pilot XL were available at the same price. Which would you buy?

And so Microsoft is doing what Google and its Android partners have not: Microsoft is building a unique experience.

I spent about a week with Windows 8 on a reference tablet before Microsoft unveiled the Consumer Preview edition of its upcoming operating system at Mobile World Congress, and I was impressed. The Redmond-based software giant has plenty of work left to do, and I expect Windows 8 to still be a work in progress when it launches to the public later this year. Microsoft is doing a lot of things right with its next-generation OS though, and the unique Metro user interface is just one way Microsoft will distinguish its tablet experience from Apple’s.

In my earlier piece, Dear tablet makers: You’re doing it wrong, I noted that there are many ways tablet vendors might separate their slates from the iPad. I gave just one brief example, but it is one I feel could have a big impact on sales if positioned properly and marketed well: sharing.

Tablets are expensive, especially when one considers the fact that in most cases, they are a third wheel for the consumer. Today’s media tablets can’t replace a PC for many users, and they certainly can’t replace a smartphone or feature phone. For those without expendable income — most people fall into this category — a $400, $500 or $600+ tablet that can be shared between every member of a family might be far more appealing than a tablet that that can only be used by one person if privacy is at all a concern.

Personal computers support multiple user accounts. This is not a new concept. Each user can log in to a PC with a unique user name and password in order to be greeted by his or her own desktop configuration and programs. And unless there are some hackers in a household, personal files belonging to one user are not accessible to others.

This concept should have been carried over to tablets from the beginning, but Microsoft’s Windows 8 will be the first mass-market example of multi-user support. In fact, as Microsoft revealed on Monday, the company plans to take things a step further — apps purchased from Microsoft’s app store by one user on a Windows 8 machine can then be downloaded for free by other users.

Windows 8 is not a media tablet killer and it most certainly is not an iPad killer. It’s not supposed to be. Microsoft’s next-generation OS may be the first platform to approach the tablet market the right way, however. Start with a solid foundation, focus on the user experience and a wide range of capabilities, and differentiate. This is how a new platform might find success in the tablet market moving forward, and it is the road Microsoft appears to be taking.

Apple’s iOS platform seemed to come out of nowhere and take the world by storm in 2007. The introduction of the first-generation iPhone set in motion a chain of events that lead up to the holiday quarter in 2011, when Apple recorded the most profitable quarter in technology history thanks mainly to unbelievable iPhone, iPod touch and iPad sales. No platform is selling as quickly as Apple’s mobile platform right now, but iOS is still in its infancy and the fact remains: as hot as iOS is right now, and as popular as smartphones and media tablets are, no platform installed base on the planet even comes close to approaching the size of Windows right now.

The Future

Microsoft said this past December that there are now more than 1.25 billion PCs running the Windows operating system. Billion, with a “B.” Smartphones are the hottest segment in consumer electronics right now and people are buying Apple’s iPad in droves, but even still, more people around the world rely on Windows than ever before. This is because the software that powers countless businesses from the ground up is built on Windows. From web browsers to accounting software to point-of-sale systems to 3D animation software to word processors to custom proprietary solutions and far, far beyond… Entire industries are built on Windows.

The future is anything but “post-PC.”

We are now entering the post-post-PC era, and its focus is the PC. A new, smarter, more versatile PC. A PC that lets users browse the web casually in bed and work with massive databases in SQL Server. A PC that can run a $0.99 news reader as well as it can run proprietary $99,000 CRM software. A PC that is as ideal for playing Angry Birds as it is for running a modeling environment that allows its user to build schematics for a skyscraper. This is the future of computing.

That is not to say Windows 8 is an “iPad killer” or that media tablets are going away. Far from it. While their functionality may overlap in a number of areas, light-duty tablets and full-fledged PCs serve different purposes and will continue to coexist for some time. What we will see, however, is media tablets becoming more capable and more powerful as PCs become better suited for touch input. At some point down the road the two categories may merge, but neither will “win” or “lose.”

The OS

I’ve spent the past week playing with and working on a Samsung tablet powered by Microsoft’s new operating system. It’s nice to be able to work and play on the same tablet.

While Windows 8 is not quite in a state where it is ready to be released to the public, it is a completely different beast than the Developer Preview Microsoft released more than five months ago. During a meeting with Microsoft executives, I was told that the Consumer Preview version of Windows 8 includes tens of thousands of changes compared to the version that was released to developers in September. Thousands of changes are system-level items that I’m sure I didn’t notice, but thousands more are user-facing changes that have helped improve the user experience dramatically.

One of my favorite features is the implementation of swipe gestures. As can be seen in the second and third images within our Windows 8 screenshot gallery, Microsoft has tweaked the main menus used to navigate the OS and perform a variety of key functions. While using a touchscreen to interface with Windows 8, these menus are opened using gestures.

A swipe from the bezel around the screen in from the right opens the start menu, which includes a search button to search for files and apps, a share button to share the current page via email or using other services, a start button, a devices button that lists devices connected to your PC, and a settings button that provides quick access to basic settings such as brightness and speaker volume, as well as a link to more system settings. A swipe in from the left switches between open apps, and a swipe in from the left and back out to the edge of the display opens the app-switcher. Within an app, a swipe down from the top or up from the bottom opens app-specific menus.

While using a keyboard and mouse, gestures from the sides are replaced by keyboard shortcuts or mouse touches to the corners of the screen. A touch to the top-right or bottom-right corner mimics a swipe in from the right and opens the start menu while a touch to the top-left or bottom-left corners opens the app-switcher.

There are countless other great features new Windows 8 Consumer Preview; from picture password, an enhanced security feature that lets the user unlock a PC by tracing preset patterns on an image of his or her choosing instead of using a simple alphanumeric password, to “roaming,” which automatically syncs settings, apps and other data between different Windows 8 computers. While one convertible slate can handle duties as a tablet, notebook and desktop computer, Windows 8 is all about choice. Some users may opt for a single device while others will want a lightweight 7-inch ARM-based tablet in addition to an eight-core beast of a desktop PC.

In terms of performance, Windows 8 exhibited the smoothness and stability we’ve come to expect in a post-Vista world, and this is just a preview version. There were hiccups, of course, but overall the experience was vastly superior than it has been with any other version of Windows. The setup is remarkably fast and easy, touch responsiveness is iPad-like and I was quite impressed with the versatility of this platform. To understand the concept of one device for work and for play is one thing. To sit in bed hopping around lightweight apps and then walk over to your desk, dock your tablet, and have desktop-grade productivity software running on the same device is something else entirely.

The machine I tested Windows 8 on is a pre-release dockable Samsung tablet with a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM. Yes, it’s a tablet with a fan. It’s also a tablet that can run your existing desktop-grade enterprise software, consumer software and lightweight Metro-style apps. Get over it.

The Endgame

Windows 8 gives us a glimpse at the future of computing, but it’s not quite there yet. While the version I spent time with is merely the Consumer Preview and not the release build of Windows 8, it gives us a very good idea of what Microsoft’s new operating system will look like when it launches. The concept is fantastic and I very much like Microsoft’s execution thus far, but it still feels like a marriage of two completely different operating systems rather than a fusion of two experiences.

This is by design, in part. Because the function of a true PC varies so greatly from the function of a media tablet (as we know this category of devices today), Microsoft has created separate experiences for each category. There is a tablet experience with the fantastic Metro UI, a desktop experience reminiscent of Windows 7, and a bit of overlap with each, intended to create some amount of cohesiveness. The end result, however, is not a consistent experience.

There is a disconnect that can be felt across Windows 8. Again, this is mostly by design. In what I call “tablet mode,” the user is presented with an interface that is quite clearly built to be touched. It is characterized by a cascade of large tiles that display live data and can be poked to open apps. The Metro-style apps that are revealed house nice big buttons and a touch-friendly design. Metro-style apps also take up every last pixel of the display, which is a fantastic canvas on which developers can paint terrific experiences.

In “desktop mode,” Windows 8 has the look and feel of Windows 7. In fact, it basically is Windows 7. There are some elements of Metro that spill over into desktop mode — such as the app-switcher and Windows Phone-like lock screen, which displays notifications from up to five apps — but they are effectively completely separate platforms.

Desktop mode has not been optimized for touch at all. In fact, tapping in a text field while no physical keyboard is attached to the tablet doesn’t even bring up the virtual keyboard. Instead, the user must tap on a small keyboard icon in the task bar to open the keyboard, and then he or she must tap another two buttons to close the keyboard once finished typing. And while in desktop mode, by the way, I found that the keyboard often obscured the text field in which I was typing.

Perhaps I can better illustrate my point about the disconnect with this simple example:

Windows 8 ships with two completely separate web browsers. One is called “Internet Explorer”. The other is called “Internet Explorer.”

Internet Explorer is a fantastic Metro-style browser that is designed with touch in mind. Controls are large and easy to poke, menus retract and let web pages occupy every inch of the display, and pages load lightning-fast in this lightweight tablet browser. Then, in desktop mode, users can browse the web using Internet Explorer, the same robust web browser hundreds of millions of people currently use around the world on their Windows PCs.

Confused yet?

Microsoft’s inclusion of two completely different web browsers that share the exact same name is indicative of the separation present in Windows 8. One tablet OS and one desktop OS, together on the same machine.

In the end, this disconnect is probably a good thing for now. Windows users come in all shapes and sizes, and millions of people who will upgrade to Windows 8 in the coming years will be terrified of doing so. They are used to Windows as we know it today, and the look and feel of Metro is a complete departure from the Windows they currently rely on day in and day out. After the initial shock wears off, these people who are so scared of change will find themselves eased into the new Windows because desktop mode is so familiar, and because “tablet mode” is so separate from it.

But this is not the future of post-post-PCs.

Windows 8 is the tip of the iceberg. The start of a shift that will eventually see the “tablet” UI and the “desktop” UI merge into one comprehensive user experience. Apple is taking a different approach; as we’re seeing in OS X Mountain Lion, Apple is slowly readying its desktop user interface for a touch environment by taking some of the elements from its gorgeous mobile UI and adapting them for desktop computers. This varies dramatically from the path Microsoft is taking with Windows 8, but the endgame is the same: one experience that is as capable as it is versatile, and as user-friendly as it is beautiful.

This is the future of computing.

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Consumer Preview will become available to the general public on Wednesday as a free download with an initial cache of more than 100 apps in the Store, all of which will be free during the preview period.

A pair of workers who claim to have been poisoned by toxins in a Suzhou, China factory while assembling touchscreens for Apple’s iPhone have written an open letter begging consumers to demand reform. SumOfUs, the organization behind the Ethical iPhone Campaign, released the letter in an email to the media on Wednesday afternoon. The letter was written by Guo Rui-qiang and Jia Jing-chuan, two former factory workers who urge consumers to sign SumOfUs’s petition and demand that Apple force its suppliers and manufacturing partners to improve working conditions at their Chinese factories. Both workers claim to have been poisoned by a chemical cleaner called N-hexane, and they have suffered neurological damage as a result. The Fair Labor Association is currently conduction inspections of two Foxconn factories, prompted by Apple, and while only preliminary inspections have been made at this point, the organization says it has already found “tons of issues.” The workers’ letter follows below in its entirety.

Dear SumOfUs Members and Friends -

You don’t know us but you have seen our work. Until recently, we worked long hours assembling Apple’s iPhone touch screens in Suzhou, China.

In early 2010, it was independently confirmed that 137 workers, including us, were poisoned by a chemical called n-hexane which was used to clean iPhone screens. N-hexane is known to cause eye, skin and respiratory tract irritation, and leads to persistant nerve damage. Apple admitted to gross labour rights violations more than a year later.

If more people know about what we went through, Apple will feel pressured to change so other workers don’t have to suffer like we did.

Can you share this letter with your friends, and ask them to join you in signing our petition calling for a reform of working conditions at their factories?

We have been pressuring Apple, and its new CEO Tim Cook, for years to compensate those of us who were injured working for them, and demanding reform of working conditions at their Chinese factories so that their workers don’t suffer like we do. Now we need your help as customers or potential customers of Apple.

We need your help to send a message to Apple before their shareholder meeting on Thursday, Feb. 23rd. We want to see a strict corporate social responsibility and reform of the audit system to prevent similar tragedies in the future. He will listen to you as current or potential consumers.

You’ve already signed the petition, and 82,000 others have too — for that, we thank you. We believe it’d be symbolicly powerful if 100,000 people signed the petition before SumOfUs delivers it to Tim Cook on Thursday at their shareholder meeting. We’re really close to that goal, but we need you to share our request with your friends to get over the edge.

Can you share our letter with your friends, and ask them to sign the petition too?

It has been over two years since many of us were hospitalized and treated but our debilitating symptoms continue. Rui-Qiang still can’t find work because he can no longer stand for the long hours most jobs require. Jing-Chuan has to spend nearly $100 a month on health supplements.

But with all of us working together to pressure Apple to change, we can make sure what happened to us doesn’t happen to others too.

-       Guo Rui-qiang and Jia Jing-chuan

With Apple’s upcoming iPad 3 launch just a few weeks away, reports and rumors have been swirling. We exclusively reported some details on the tablet which The Wall Street Journal has basically confirmed, but here’s a round-up using what we know, what’s been rumored and reported, and what I’d wager the iPad 3 will feature when it launches early next month:

• A Retina Display is a near-certainty. This display will offer double the resolution of the iPad and iPad 2, bringing the resolution of the screen to a whopping 2048 x 1536 pixels. This is better than the resolution you get from a 1080p Blu-ray disc, and almost as large as Apple’s 27-inch iMac display. Imagine the clarity of an iPhone 4S display three times as big, and you’ll get an idea of what to expect with the iPad 3′s screen. Images will look beautiful and text will look as crisp as if it were a magazine that you’re reading.
• 4G LTE. The ability to use the iPad on 4G LTE networks would mark the first time Apple has manufactured a 4G device, and there’s a very solid chance that the new iPad will have 4G built-in. This will support AT&T and Verizon’s 4G LTE networks in the United States, and it’s possible it will support other 4G LTE deployments in other parts of the world depending on frequencies.
• Better cameras. I’d expect a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera for the rear camera at the bare minimum with a 5-megapixel unit possible, and Apple will also include a front-facing camera that supports HD FaceTime chats.
• Wi-Fi and Cellular models. Apple will most likely offer two versions of the iPad just as the company does now — a Wi-Fi only and a Wi-Fi + cellular variant, though I’d wager that Apple will be able to combine the GSM and CDMA models into one, offering a truly global 4G + 3G + CDMA + GSM + Wi-Fi iPad 3.
• Apple A6 quad-core processor. While the rumor mill has been going back and forth about whether Apple will include the company’s first quad-core processor for iOS in the iPad 3, I have to say that I expect Apple to do so. Since Apple is on a yearly product cycle, I’d bet that a quad-core processor is featured, setting the stage for an A6 quad-core chip in the iPhone 5 (clocked slightly lower than the iPad’s chip) later this fall.
• A larger battery. It is expected that Apple is going to use a much larger battery in the iPad 3, but before you think that battery life is going to be increased by 50%, I’m assuming this is simply to compensate for a more power-hungry 4G LTE chip, faster processor and more powerful GPU to power that Retina Display. I expect comparable battery life to the iPad 2, though it’s certainly possible Apple could push it just a tad bit farther and make it better.
• The outside hardware of the iPad 3 will most likely be identical to the iPad 2. In fact, the only change that’s likely to occur is that the case will be less than 1 millimeter thicker, not something that’ll will barely be noticeable.
• iOS 5.1. This is a no-brainer, but iOS 5.1 will be introduced with the iPad 3 and be released for the iPhone and iPod touch as well.
• Siri for iPad. I’d wager heavily that the iPad 3 will at least feature Siri’s text dictation, though it’s certainly possible Apple will bring the full Siri experience to the iPad.

The world’s most beautiful display on a mobile device, the fastest wireless connection in the world, an industry-leading custom quad-core processor and battery life that’s unmatched by the competition — among many other upgrades. Sounds good to me.

I love my iPhone. In fact, I’ve loved every iPhone Apple has launched since the first model was unveiled in 2007. Slowly but surely, Apple has introduced new features and eliminated upon almost every major gripe people had with iOS to push the limits of what we expect from a modern smartphone, and also to keep the platform on par with or even ahead of the competition. Copy and paste, MMS, background apps, multitasking, notifications, folders and much more have been added over time. There is one thing that makes me hate my iPhone every single day though, and I hope Apple is going to address it soon. I need more control over my alerts.

I really wish Apple would create an area in settings, or even add on to the notifications options, to allow users to set custom alert settings for different things. For instance, I’d love it if I could have different profile modes with settings for vibrate, ring, volume and ringtone much like how RIM’s BlackBerry phones have worked for ages. And there’s plenty of room for improvement beyond what RIM is doing in its BlackBerry OS… just look at how great Motorola’s Smart Actions feature is. Apple could totally take this one step further and allow location-based profiles for alerts, system settings, and more. When I get home, I want Bluetooth to turn off automatically, and I want my alert profile to change, for instance.

I might want my phone to vibrate for almost all alerts, and sometimes I want my phone ring as well. Sometimes I want everything to be on silent and have my phone ring only if it’s a certain person calling or messaging me. I just want more control over how my phone acts in this respect — it’s something that is half-assed in its current state. Sure, you can set custom alert tones for SMS and iMessage, and you can set custom ringers for specific contacts as well, but this is all being fed through a very rudimentary ”your phone is either on ring or vibrate, you idiot” switch.

If Apple does decide to introduce some sort of profile control, it will fix one of the most glaring holes still in iOS, in my view. We’ll get there eventually, I believe.

As 2012 approaches, we thought it would be fun to look back on 2011 one last time and share our biggest stories of the year with you. Here they are in order, from our post popular post of the year to our tenth most popular post:

1. Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him
2. BlackBerry Messenger will launch on Android and iOS
3. Samsung Galaxy Nexus full specs revealed; Verizon Wireless exclusive
4. BlackBerry Dakota gets pictured; the touch and type BlackBerry you’ve been waiting for
5. Google’s first Ice Cream Sandwich phone to be manufactured by Samsung, possibly dubbed ‘Nexus Prime’
6. Live from Apple’s WWDC 2011 keynote with Steve Jobs
7. Apple testing iPhone for T-Mobile USA
8. Google Nexus 4G detailed – 720p display, 4G LTE, Android 4.0
9. BlackBerry Bold 9900 review
10. Inside RIM: An exclusive look at the rise and fall of the company that made smartphones smart

Have a great and safe New Year.