IBLOG SPACE

Verizon had four LTE devices to talk about in its financial results earlier this morning , and as of April 28 there’ll be another on the shelves. The Verizon DROID Charge by Samsung is mighty similar to the Galaxy S II , with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, Android OS and an 8-megapixel rear camera, but it throws in 4G LTE too. There’s also a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, mobile hotspot functionality and Swype pre-loaded. The CPU runs at 1GHz, and there’s an LED flash and access to Samsung’s Media Hub content download store. You’ll pay considerably more for that Super AMOLED Plus display, however. The Verizon DROID Charge by Samsung will be $299.99 with a new two-year customer agreement, a premium of $50 over the HTC Thunderbolt . Press Release: VERIZON WIRELESS UNLEASHES DROID CHARGE BY SAMSUNG April 21, 2011 DROID CHARGE Joins Verizon Wireless’ DROID family As Samsung’s First 4G LTE Smartphone BASKING RIDGE, N.J. –Verizon Wireless and Samsung Telecommunications America (S

Fall-out from news earlier this week that the iPhone and 3G-enabled iPad maintain a comprehensive log of location data continues, with suggestions that not only are the revelations not as fresh as they’re presented as, but arguments as to how dangerous the location collection actually is. Alex Levinson claims that the discovery of the “consolidated.db” database was in fact made several months ago, shortly after the release of the iPhone 4. The researcher also suggests that, contrary to much of the hype, the database itself is of relatively little importance, since Apple is not actually accessing it. “Apple is not harvesting this data from your device” Levinson insists, stating that “through my research in this field and all traffic analysis I have performed, not once have I seen this data traverse a network.” Instead, he claims the file has always been present, used as “a log generated by the various radios and sensors”, but was simply moved when iOS 4.0 was released and then “redisc

Eye-Fi’s Direct Mode has gone live , offering users of the company’s WiFi-enabled X2 memory cards the ability to push images direct to the iOS and Android apps. Announced back in January, rather than push images to Eye-Fi’s servers first, and then pull them down to a local device, Direct Mode works the other way around and allows you to choose which files get uploaded. That saves time and makes for easier control over pictures, handy if you’re the sort of person who takes plenty of shots straight away and then wants to choose the best of them. To do it, the Eye-Fi card can create its own “soft Access Point” to which the app connects to; alternatively, if both card and gadget are on the same wireless network, it will use that instead. You’ll need an Android device running 2.1 Eclair or higher, or an iOS device running 4.0 or higher, in order to use the system. There’s more on Direct Mode in Eye-Fi’s FAQ on the topic.

With the ink just dry on the contract between Nokia and Microsoft, new details on the Windows Phone partnership have emerged that detail a little more of what the two companies have committed to. We’ll have to wait until late-2011 to see the first Nokia Windows Phones , but in the meantime some of the company’s Ovi Maps goodness will be jumping over to the Microsoft platform. Meanwhile, there’s also money saving news for those developers looking to make the leap from Symbian to Windows Phone. Where currently Bing takes pride of place on Windows Phone 7 handsets, Nokia will supply the mapping and location-based services using the same Ovi Maps technologies we’ve seen included free on recent Symbian handsets. It’s unlikely to look exactly the same – nor, indeed, bear Ovi branding – but we can likely expect free turn-by-turn navigation, plenty of bundled POI and travel information, and perhaps even some of the 3D mapping Nokia showed for web users recently. As for courting developers, Mi

There’s a big fat XOOM contest going on – did you know? We’ve got a total of FIVE XOOM tablets to give away – 2 have been claimed, there’s 2 left on Android Community, and we’ve still got just one! That means you’ve got THREE opportunities to win these crazy awesome Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets. They’re packed with NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 dual-core processors and they’re just jumping out of the box to land on your laps. Love em! Below you’re going to find the limited rules set. In order for you to see the FULL rules, you’re going to have to go back to the original contest rules post and make sure you got it all – then enter using the rules below! Just a few clicks and you’re in! What a fabulous opportunity to win an excellent tablet for absolutely free! To win one of these fabulous tablets, you must: 1. “like” us on Facebook: facebook.com/slashgear.com 2. Comment on the wall saying something nice like “SlashGear and NVIDIA are ever so generous and kind with their dual-core generosity.” Cont

We loved the Verizon ThunderBolt by HTC’s LTE speed, but hated the fact that, at full throttle, the smartphone could drain its battery in under four hours. Happily it seems easier ways to top up your charge are fast incoming: GottaBeMobile spotted a replacement Inductive Battery Cover for the ThunderBolt listed on the carrier’s site. As with previous inductive charging systems we’ve seen, the new cover will allow the ThunderBolt to rejuice its battery whenever it’s placed down on a wireless docking plate. Probably the best known device to use this kind of tech is the Palm Pre and subsequent Palm/HP webOS handsets, which use a Touchstone charger to avoid plugging in a regular wired AC adapter. With no technical details it’s hard to know what system exactly Verizon and HTC are using. Meanwhile availability is also unclear; at the moment the “buy now” button does nothing, and there’s no word from the company as to when it might go on sale.

The Samsung Focus ended up being our unofficial pick of the first-wave of Windows Phone 7 handsets, not least because of its brilliant display and speedy uploads. Now, it seems, AT&T wants to take 50-percent of those abilities away, with the accusation that the recently-released NoDo update actually disables HSUPA . Updated after the cut with AT&T comment It seems that, for one reason or another, AT&T doesn’t want its users to hammer the new HSPA+ network and so has been systematically blocking HSUPA uploads from each of its devices. The Focus was the one handset which didn’t have the artificial limitation. Ironically, while it’s taken AT&T months to get this blip of success in their otherwise dreary HSUPA line-up addressed, it’s only taken days for a fix to emerge from WPCentral . AT&T is yet to comment publicly about the move; we’ll update if we get a comment. Update: AT&T tells us that the accusations are incorrect: the Focus never had HSUPA to begin with. W