Android devices now outselling Apple iPhones?

If the latest NPD report is to be believed, then yes. It really should not be a surprise, however. There are multiple Android devices scurried across every major carrier in the U.S. alone, and in addition to be priced very competitively, Verizon’s BOGO has no doubt moved quite a few units. NPD’s consumer research data comes from self-reported online consumer surveys and it does not include corporate sales information which will most likely change some of these numbers. Regardless, the actual split in terms of U.S. smartphone share, as reported, has RIM at 36%, Google Android at 28%, and Apple coming in at 21%. Apple hasn’t released a new model since June of last year, and we can’t help but think some of those tech-savvy people out there (BGR readers) are just holding off, but you have to give it to Android this time around — the Android Army has spoken.

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HP Slate gets unofficially reviewed…

Tech blobg, Conecti.ca, reportedly got its hands on a pre-release copy of the HP Slate and did a quick unofficial hands on review. The review, in Spanish and machine-translated by Google, is not kind toward the Windows 7-powered device. The review is peppered with negativity including the observation of ”a long and annoying load time operating system” and a final verdict upholds the less-than enthusiastic theme of the review by proclaiming that the device and its experience is “meh”. On the plus side, the device has “expansion ports ad-nauseum” and, though made of plastic, the slate “feels dense and tough”. Overall, the reviewers see this device as a portable competitor to netbooks and not necessarily the proverbial iPad killer that the device is touted to be.

[Via PC World]

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HTC EVO 4G first impressions

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We got some one-on-one time with the HTC EVO 4G today, and let us succinctly sum up our experience for you: wow. We’ll start with the screen… it’s gorgeous. 4.3 inches, enormous, easy to type on, responsive… it’s everything you want out of a touch screen. How’s the phones speed you ask? The product manager from HTC kept saying: “this isn’t the final software build, so there could be some lag” but to be honest, we couldn’t really find any. Opening Google Earth with 5 applications running in the background produced a tiny lag (3 seconds) but once Google Earth was up and running we were flying again.

The 1GHz Snapdragon processor really flexes its muscle in the EVO 4G. We pressed the product managers about a realistic battery life with 4G on, but all they could muster up for us was, “it’s good.” Bollocks. If you love HTC’s Sense UI, you’re really, really going to love this phone. The enhancements to Android’s UI are done with great detail and add minimal overhead to the phone’s resources (arguable, we guess). Widgets provide easy access to social media content, bookmarks, and other phone resources. You can update your “status” on several social media sites using HTC’s social widget. The EVO is a “with Google” phone and supports Exchange, Gmail, POP, and IMAP email accounts — although you can only have one Exchange account configured to the phone. We prefer having support for multiple Exchange accounts, but for most users this won’t be the end of the world.

Want more good news? The video camera is awesome. You can choose your desired resolution — we know you’re going to be keeping it in 720p — record, using either the front or rear facing camera, and upload to your favorite social media site, send via email or even transfer via Bluetooth. The quality is great and watching your videos play back on that screen is a real treat. We could go on and on about this phone but you get the idea. Great screen, very responsive, and, currently is in a class of it’s own as far as Android (and dare we say all) devices go. All Sprint and HTC will give us for a release timeline is “summer.” We’ve got June 21st circled on our calendars. Hit up the gallery for images!

UPDATE: The screen is not AMOLED as I originally wrote, I’m low on sleep.  Sorry for the confusion!

 

iPad officialy releasing April 3!

There isn’t much else to say about this one. Apple has made the iPad release date official; that date is April 3rd for the Wi-Fi models. Pre-orders for the jumbo iPhone will begin on March 12th. If you’ve been living under a rock, and don’t know that much about the iPad, you can hit up our recap to get up to speed. Who has an extra $499 in their possession that they will be wiring to Apple, Inc. on March 12th? If you’re looking for the 3G-enabled models, Apple has said those will ship later in April.

More BlackBerry Slider images

 

Remember that BlackBerry slider? BBLeaks got a hold of some higher resolution pics, and there’s even a BlackBerry 8900 thrown in next to it for size comparisons. Hit the break for one more picture and to jump on over for the rest of the shots! Have these new pictures changed what you think of what’s said to be pretty early hardware? 

New Blackberry in the works??

 

This isn’t confirmed, but with RIM rumored to be exploring sliding-QWERTY devices for a pretty long time, one of our BlackBerry connects dropped some info on us and we wanted it to share it. Here’s what we know: 

• It’s a portrait-oriented slider. While most people assume a device with slideout keyboard would end up being something like HTC’s devices, we’ve been told this particular handset is more like the Palm Pre in terms of layout.
• The phone will run BlackBerry OS 6.0
• The rumored device will 100% support Wi-Fi 802.11n
• The resolution unfortunately has not improved, it is still 360×480.
• No word on if this will have a touch screen, but we’d assume so, and our source alluded to this possibly being what the rumored BlackBerry Magnum/Dakota evolved into. Not saying there won’t be a Bold-like device with touchscreen, optical trackpad, and physical keyboard, but this might be released first.
• If it does have a touch screen, this could in fact be the mythical BlackBerry Storm slider — picture a Storm 9520 with a slide up Bold-esque keyboard.
• The phone will not be a Verizon exclusive it’s supposed to be a GSM/HSPA device.

That’s all we’ve got for now, folks. What are you thinking? Does this remotely interest you, or could you care less about the hardware at this point and just hope that RIM can make some pretty big strides as far as their OS is concerned?