Playstation Vita release update: Amazon.com confirms PS Vita US release date to be December 31 2011

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So around the web people are still debating as to whether or not the Amazon.com release dates for the PS Vita are in fact real. Amazon.com however seem to be quite certain of their info:


User:When i preorder the playstation vita today, when exactly will you ship it? the listed release date is dec 31, so is this a placeholder date or actual release date? Thank you.
Amazon:If the date is listed as "This item will be released on December 31", the item will be released on that date.
If you preorder this item, we'll ship it to you as per the shipping method you chosen.
User:Ok do you have this info directly from Sony?
Amazon:Yes, this information we got directly from Sony.
Amazon:Because Sony is our supplier.

PS Vita to be released 31 December 2011 according to Amazon.com

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The highly anticipated Playstation Vita, Sony's new handheld console, is to be released in the US on 31 December 2011 according to Amazon.com. Seems like Amazon is in the know whereas the rest of the world is not!

I believe the PS Vita will become a great succes. The game line up is huge and many games have actually been demoed and are playable. This is exactly where Sony is doing better than Nintendo. The abundance of PS Vita games, in combination with, in my humble opinion, some amazing tech in the handheld gives Sony a huge advantage over Nintendo.

All a hype, just like the 3DS? Yeah probably, but at least Sony's device will actually have content, whereas the 3DS until recenly was just some interesting yet unusable tech, leaving early adopters (like yours truly) empty handed and selling their 3DS's early enough to escape Nintendo's price drop.

The Playstation Vita boosts some incredible tech, like front and rear touch panel, gyroscope (ok so that's no so new) and an OLED screen. To my knowledge this device will actually be the first mass production device with an OLED screen.

I for one am looking forward to getting my hands on a Vita as soon as I can.

Froyo 2.2 rolled out to Benelux HTC Desire owners, Tasty Frozen Yoghurt

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As of today owners of the HTC Desire are finally made happy with Android 2.2 aka Froyo.

Seems like HTC spoke only a little too soon, but instead of what happened in the debacle surrounding the Hero, HTC this time came forward really fast with the update. Dutch users are widely reporting the update being available. Seems like a couple of presses on the "check for updates" button does the trick. If that fails, you can download the update right here!

Thanks HTC, for not letting your users down this time! Now let's continue the rat race to Android 3... :p

Froyo 2.2 update HTC Desire, Mark Moons makes Yoghurt go bad

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Mark moons (Director at HTC Benelux) yesterday announced the roll out of Froyo Android 2.2 for HTC Desire handsets. But after a while his statements on twitter and Facebook have turned from really sweet into bitter and sour. HTC Germany denies the roll out (at least for Germany) and says that Froyo is still in final testing stage. Hundreds, if not thousands of happy campers were anticipating the roll out at various (gadget)forums, where after many hours the anti climax became clear. HTC why would you do this to your users, first there was the very bad update scheme for the Hero and now this. HTC has a rep to keep up, but it is slowly deteriorating. Oh well, will have to wait and see I guess.

Motorola event: Motoblur

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Motorola's Sanjay K. Jha acknowledges that mobile broadband has become ubiquitous and he even expects more growth worldwide. Well that's surely agreeable, but what role does Motorola see for itself in these developments? Well Motorola has a line of devices coming up, but has only announced a single device during the keynote on the event. That device is the Motoblur, an Android device that merges all of your information streams to make it accessible when and where you like. Motoblur actually seems like an HTC Hero interface. It has live widgets like the Hero and home screen is customizable. In addition, during the event, T-mobile announced the Click, a Motoblur Android phone.

Pretty dissappointing so far if you ask me. This phone is definitely not the long awaited Sholes which will probably be announced in a few weeks. If at all that is. Because I don't really see why they would wait with the announcement. So that could mean that all of the exciting rumours in the past months may have been bogus. Let's hope not though.

We'll keep you posted!

HTC Hero coming to Sprint

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"Sprint and HTC Corporation today announced the upcoming arrival of the much-anticipated HTC Hero™ from Sprint, the first wireless device offering the combination of the open and innovative Android platform with the high-speed connectivity of America’s most dependable 3G network1 (EVDO Rev. A.) Offering a rich mobile Internet experience, the much-anticipated HTC Hero offers synchronization for built-in Google mobile services, including Google Search™, Google Maps™, Gmail™, and YouTube™ as well as access to thousands of applications built on the Android platform."

So here it is, finally customers in the US have clarity on where to get the beloved Android phone. Availability is set on October 11th. Oddly the phone will look very different from the European version, as can be seen on some leaked pictures from the web. I wonder what Americans will like better though. I also wonder what version of Android will ship with the US Hero, as Android 1.6 was announced today. It would make sense for the update to be preinstalled but I guess you just never know.

Augmented reality for Android getting a boost

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A variety of Android applications featuring augmented reality have hit the market recently. Although technically in my opinon tagging an object in camera vision with a dot is not really augmented reality, nor does it reach its full potential that way, it is certainly interesting to see programmers get enthusiastical about the concept.

The latest addition in AR is a traffic program that allows users in Toronto to see real time images of traffic on their route, thus enabling users to avoid traffic jams, or to avoid getting on certain roads even before leaving the house.

Watch a video of the app in action:



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