The past week has practically been filled with slow news days, however over the course of it, there have been enough items worthy of attention to warrant this post, so here it goes, the top news for the past week that you should know about:
Dell releases Android Gingerbread for the 5 inch Streak
Surprisingly, Dell still cares about the original Streak owners, who’ve gone through a lot of pain to have their device’s OS up to date, and after having to put up with outdated versions since they purchased their tablet/smartphone hybrid, they’re finally getting a breath of fresh air with the new Gingerbread update for the 5 inch Streak. This is the last update for the device, but it’s much better than being stuck with Éclair or Froyo on such a decently powerful device.
RIM was hit with yet another trademark lawsuit
RIM doesn’t seem to catch a break, even for the Christmas holidays. After being sued for infringement on the name “BBX”, which forced them to change it to Blackberry 10, they’ve now fallen under another attack, this time for the “BBM” trademark, which they’ve been using for quite some time, but which has already been in use by the Bureau of Broadcast Management, a non-profit business intelligence company that’s been active since 1944 in Canada. The company’s CEO has already approached RIM before with a solution to rebrand their own company if RIM covers the cost, which the mobile giant refused. It’s fairly certain to say that BBM means “BlackBerry Messenger” in most people’s minds, so RIM may yet win this round.
Motorola Droid 4 may be delayed until February 2012
The Droid 4, which was expected to hit the shelves by the end of the year, will most probably be delayed until February 2012, according to a leaked memo. The new handset was already pretty quick to step on the toes of the current Droid 3, so the reason may be more related to marketing than technical or production difficulties.
Nokia renames Symbian to Belle
Without much fanfare, Nokia has renamed Symbian to Belle, ending the brand name’s long history of being one of the top operating systems on mobile devices. It’s a sad day for Symbian fans, but the OS itself will continue to be developed under the new name. Presumably, the company just wanted to start anew with their OS, although they could’ve handled the announcement better.
Samsung confirms there will be no Ice Cream Sandwich for Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab
After announcing the release of an Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Nexus S, everyone expected Samsung to do the same for the older, but identical hardware-wise Galaxy S smartphone and Galaxy Tab 7 inch tablet. However, the two devices will NOT be getting the update, all because of some incompatibilities with the version of Touch Wiz running on them. It’s sad news for the owners, since the hardware is more than capable of running the new and improved OS without problems.
FCC approves AT&T’s purchase of Qualcomm’s 700 MHz spectrum
AT&T hasn’t been at the best odds with the FCC, ever since they refused to agree to their merger with T-Mobile USA, which led to the company having to pay Deutsche Telecom a record breaking $3 billion break-up fee since the deal has not gone through. But the FCC has approved the mobile giant’s bid for Qualcomm’s 700 MHz spectrum, so at least AT&T can look forward to improving their service using a higher speed 4G LTE network that should be able to compete evenly with Verizon.
It’s Christmas time, and the New Year is right around the corner, but the mobile industry keeps developing regardless. Stay tuned for more news at the end of this week on Gadgetmania.com and Merry Christmas!
