Another ruling from a European court on the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuits over the Galaxy Tab’s design has come in, and it doesn’t bode well for Apple. An appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands dismissed Apple’s patent-infringement attempt to get the Galaxy Tab banned from sale in the country, following up on Apple’s appeal after a lower court’s similar decision in August. The court made its decision based on at least two pieces of prior art for each of Apple’s claims, determining that Apple’s claims were therefore narrow enough that they had not been infringed. Next week, a German...

Our sister blog Gadgetell reports that Samsung has started to sell the Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0 directly through its website, for $229.99 and $269.99 respectively. Both devices have similar specs: 800 x 480 resolution on 4” or 5” screens (just a bit less than the current iPod Touch’s 960 x 640 at 3.5”, but certainly better than its prior 480 x 320), 8 GB internal memory with a microSD card slot for expansion, front-facing camera and 3.2 megapixel rear camera (compare that to the iPod Touch’s 1 MP camera), Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11 b/g/n wifi, and Android Market access. They...

I’m not sure I follow this story, but if it’s true it could be important for the burgeoning Android device market. The blog Paris Lemon points to a story that’s been buried under today’s spate of Kindle news: Microsoft just issued a press release concerning a patent portfolio cross-licensing partnership it just signed with Samsung. Included in the press release is the sentence, “Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung’s mobile phones and tablets running the Android mobile platform.” Paris Lemon points out that this means that of the three major Android OEMs,...

A while ago I wrote about the paucity of Android equivalents to the iPod Touch, and suggested that Samsung’s Galaxy Player might be such an equivalent. Shawn Ingram at our sister blog Gadgetell has just gotten its hands on the Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0, and also the Galaxy Tab 8.9, and has posted some first impressions. In fact, first impressions are just about all it has of the two Players. (Ingram got his hands on a review unit of the Tab 8.9, and will review it more fully later, but apparently not for the Players.) It does note...

The Apple vs. Samsung court case in Europe over whether seems to get more ridiculous by the day. Recently, Samsung introduced as prior art footage from the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which depicted astronauts watching video on tablets that looked very similar to the design of the iPad. Inspired by this notion, CNet put together a photo gallery suggesting other patents that could be invalidated by science-fictional prior art—including a comparison of the Kindle to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, they neglect to mention that this isn’t even the first case of...

Ars Technica reports that Apple is again stepping up to the plate to defend its developers from patent troll Lodsys, stating in its most recent filing that it has every right to intervene in Lodsys’s lawsuits against its developers. Apple contends that its licenses to Lodsys’s technology extend to developers, who would not have the resources necessary to represent Apple’s interests in the suit. An interesting note in the piece is that Apple’s defense acknowledges Lodsys’s patents as valid, and is based on the doctrine of “exhaustion”, that its license extends to third-party developers. However, others are insisting...

In his latest column for the Guardian, nerd blogger/novelist extraordinaire Cory Doctorow reviews the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and finds it to be lacking in features for a putative iPad replacement. In particular, he dislikes the way that it uses a proprietary docking cable just like Apple, lacks the micro-SD card reader in the wi-fi version, and requires a proprietary application for file transfer rather than acting like a USB hard drive when connected the way most other tablets do. Doctorow mentions that he had high hopes for the Galaxy Tab because it was based on Android, and Google allowed...

Rich Adin at An American Editor says he won't buy a tablet in the near future, partly because of the walled garden approach enforced by Apple, and partly for utilitarian reasons: My “no” came about for various reasons, not least of which is that I really dislike Steve Jobs telling me what compromises I have to make. For me, the lure of the PC/Microsoft world has always been that, with the exception of the operating system, I have choices — and lots of them. [...] I do know someone who bought a tablet and loves it. But when I asked him...

Since a long standing as A few weeks ago, I looked at viable Android substitutes for the iPod Touch. One of the only contenders was Samsung's Galaxy Player, which seemed to have about the same specs but not very good reviews. Now Engadget reports that Best Buy's mobile shopping application lists a price for the eight GB 5 inch Galaxy Player of $269.99. Though it costs a bit more than the iPod Touch, the Galaxy Player does have a slightly larger screen, as well as a couple of features that the iPod Touch does not, including a...

And speaking of tablet deals, Woot has a refurbished Samsung 7” Galaxy Tab Android tablet for $259.99 + $5 for shipping. Of course, you can buy the same tablet for $199.99 with a two-year contract from Sprint, but the refurb is entirely contract-free meaning you can stick with wi-fi or pay for 3G if you want. The Nook Color has been favorably compared to this tablet, albeit with considerably less processing horsepower; this is the chance to own a Tab with no strings for only $10 more than a new Nook Color costs. Like many such deals, it only...

I’ve greatly enjoyed the two 1st-generation iPod Touch pocket-sized media/Internet devices I’ve had over the last few years, and have had my eyes on the 4th-generation iPod Touch for some little while. I’ve been thinking that, come the fall, I might upgrade to a 4th-gen model when the 5th-gen iPod Touch comes out and drives refurb prices down. From a features perspective, the iPod Touch has just about everything I could want: a high-quality, highly-sensitive touchscreen, excellent e-book reading capability (even without iBooks available on the 1st-generation model, I’ve got Stanza so I have no complaints there), great...

Peter Rojas has a post at gdgt.com laying out why he thinks Amazon is building an Android tablet and Samsung is building it. His reasoning basically comes down to that, considering Amazon’s expansions into an Android app store and multimedia/cloud services, it makes sense to come out with a device made to use with those the way the Kindle was made to use with e-books. It could also compete with B&N’s Nook Color, which has reportedly been selling pretty well so far. On ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez takes a look at Rojas’s reasoning, noting that he is a seasoned tech...