HTC Droid Incredible 4G Stops By The FCC Before Reaching Verizon

HTC may only plan to stay in the market with "One" series, but that doesn't mean that they plan to ditch their previous projects. Leaks of the HTCDroid Incredible 4G have been among us for the past couple of months, and especially because of that LTE band 13 which belongs to Verizon's own piece of speedy heaven at 700MHz. 

Sadly, well, the image doesn't do any better than the past leaks we showed you. It may just be just another Incredible on a new set of steroids, since we've expected this to become the final name for the HTC Fireball that we've been drooling over since CES. Sadly no final images, no specs and a tad of Gingerbread from the previous leaks may disappoint, but who knows, we might be in for a surprise. 

Force Fast Charging On Your Galaxy Nexus

Have you ever noticed that your smartphone or tablet charges faster when connected to the wall than when connected to a USB hub or your computer? The reason for this is due to the amount of power that each technology can push. USB charging is generally stuck at ~500mA whereas A/C charging (with D/C conversion, of course) can sometimes double that. 

Often times your charging method can support the extra amperage (USB, car adapter, POGO pins, etc.), but the phone itself limits the rate of charge. This can be overridden, but only at the kernel level. That's just what one developer did! 

By flashing his custom kernel and using an app to tell the kernel to treat all charging sources as A/C, battery charging times can be dramatically reduced. 

Of course, this requires unlocking your phone, flashing a custom ROM and the kernel, and has the possibility of melting your phone -- no really, it could! But if you're brave, we'd love to her your results in the comments below! 

Would You Buy a 4,000mAh Battery For Your GSM Galaxy Nexus?

Remember the GSM Galaxy Nexus Extended Battery that we showed you last month? The stockbattery is 1750mAh. The official extended battery is 2000mAh. That extra little bit of juice has been a life-saver for my wife. Her phone now runs all day, and can get her through the night and half-way through the next day. Impressive! 

What if you need even more? How would you likedouble the capacity of the extended battery? Yes, 4000mAh! Now you can! 

Unfortunately, unlike the official extended battery, which only slightly increases the size of the phone, the 4000mAh battery adds a large bump to the back of the phone. 

Both extended batteries require a replacement back plate, but each of them comes with one, so no worries there. The 4000mAh battery cover includes a kickstand, which looks pretty cool, if you ask me! 

The following video is in Italian, but does a good job showing you how to install the battery and back plate, and how the kick-stand works. 

For $99 the price isn't too bad... but would you buy this battery for your phone? Let us know in the comments! 

Windows 8 on a Tablet: First Impressions (Video)

After the Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released this week, it took me a few hours to decide wether or not I wanted to install it on my old HP TouchSmart tm2 that I use daily and bought a while before the original iPad came out. Needless to say I took the plunge after the setup program told me just about everything I had already installed would be compatible. 

It turns out Windows 8 is going to be a lot like Windows Phone 7 and that's probably a good thing. You've got full screen "Metro" style apps that have no reminants of application chrome or even operating system controls. You've got the gorgeous live tiles that animate with pictures, social network notifications, messages, emails and weather. Everything is very smooth and responsive to the touch. 

However there are some big differences. First of all, I was quite content with the Windows 7 touch interface. You touch the buttons and they activate. That's pretty simple. Now that I've been using Windows 8 though, I'm much more impressed. The touch UI is designed to be both ergonomic, highly efficient, and clutter free! The main controls are right next to the bezel where your thumbs would be if you were holding atablet. Just swipe your thumb along the left side to flip between open apps. Swipe across it and then back to show a list of thumbnails representing open apps that you can easily tap to open the one you're looking for. Then swiping on the right side with your thumb opens the "charms" for other types of operating-system interactions. It's really quite nice once you learn how to use it, and that's really the only issue... there's nothing on the screen giving you any kind of indication on how to interact with this new user interface. 

Overall, I'm very impressed with the speed, usability, and preview apps in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I'm glad that Microsoft went this direction for their new tablet initiative rather than scaling up a mobile operating system like Windows Phone 7. The fact that you can easily jump back into a desktop computer interface in order to run all of your high-end content-creation programs (even though they may not be designed for touch UIs) is fantastic for mobile productivity. 

Have you tried the Windows 8 Consumer Preview yet? Are you looking forward to new Windows 8 tablets coming to the market? 

Samsung Galaxy S III: First Benchmark?

There's a strong possibility that the first benchmark of the Samsung Galaxy S III has been published -- assuming, that is, you believe (like we do) that the next Galaxy S will be going by model number GT-I9300. Before we get into that debate, here is the lowdown: a handset claiming to be GT-I9300 took two passes through the GLBenchmark suite of tests late last month, with the results only recently getting processed. Based on some research into the user who uploaded the tests, we believe that they were, in fact, performed by a Samsung employee. 

The headline news here is that the resolution is being reported as 1196 x 720, both potentially dispelling rumors of a 1080p full HD screen, while at the same time suggesting a buttonless design a la the Galaxy Nexus (also 1196 x 720). The processor is listed as maxing out at 1.4GHz, but a crucial bit of information is missing: the number of cores. We know that it's running an Exynos 4 from Samsung, but it could be either the dual core Exynos 4212 or the quad core Exynos 4414 -- if we had to guess, we'd go with quad core, if only to keep pace with LG and HTC on the spec sheet. 

Also revealed are a Mali 400 MP GPU, the same as found on the Galaxy S II. However, based on the single published result -- a GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt Standard score of 6584 frames (58.3fps) -- it looks like it is being clocked higher in the I9300, according to Anand Shimpi, editor and founder of AnandTech. Thus the supposed SGS III is able to maintain more or less the same framerate as the SGS II despite needing to push substantially more pixels. Finally, we learn that I9300 is running a 4.0.3 Ice CreamSandwich build of Android. 

Much of the confusion over model numbers seems to stem from a recent UAProf which listed the I9300's resolution as 1024 x 600, although like it did with the Galaxy Nexus, Samsung is probably just reusing the information from another device's profile. What we do know is that I9300 support pages have recently shown up and been pulled from some global Samsung sites, and the very few photos uploaded to sharing sites taken by that model have all been pulled down. Right now the only other candidate for the Galaxy S III model number is GT-I9500, and that is reportedly a device not running Android at all, but an upcoming OS from Samsung and Intel.