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It hit Verizon’s system a few weeks ago and now it’s hitting a white corner for some pictures, showing VZW branding no less. It’s the US-spec version of the Incredible S, said to be running Android 2.2 but word is that Gingerbread will be on-tap before it ships. The rest of the specs on this four-inch slab line up with what we’ve learned before, meaning the only question now is the all-important when.

HTC Droid Incredible 2 smiles pretty for the camera, shows off its fresh VZW tat originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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March 18th may seem like an eternity if you expected your Motorola Xoom to come with Adobe Flash on day one. But you know what? If you put your trust in a mysterious file floating about the internet, there’s no need to wait that long. MyDroidWorld obtained possession of a leaked build of Adobe Flash Player 10.2 for the Xoom, which doesn’t need root or even a preliminary update to install — you just need to check the “Unknown sources” box under Settings > Applications, sideload the file or download it from the Xoom’s browser and you’re good to go. The best part? Based on our preliminary testing, Flash performs exceedingly well on the Xoom’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor.

While this early build of Flash 10.2 was pretty choppy during HD playback, low-res video content rendered at perfectly viewable speeds, and we were able to play games (like Nanaca Crash and Canabalt) so long as they didn’t require anything more than single-button control schemes. By contrast, Hulu was a no-go (it’s still blocked), and this build has some kinks to work out when it comes to multitasking — while any single Flash site ran well and we could quickly tab between, the more Flash-heavy tabs we had open, the slower each one ran individually — which is why the video above starts out so choppy. Adobe’s UI also seemed to have some difficulty detecting when we wanted to make a Flash item full-screen. Typically, you double-tap an item to enlarge it, but sometimes that didn’t work, and other times a context-sensitive UI bar would randomly drop from the top of a Flash window to let us know we could focus on it individually. Before you judge the merits of Flash on tablet, however, remember that this is a leaked version of a beta release, and if it’s this good out of the gate, we’re pretty excited about how well it might perform after a few tweaks. Don’t miss our video above, and find the file you need to install Flash yourself at our source link.

Update: We managed to get Flash to drop one of those context-sensitive buttons during a session of Canabalt and make the window full screen, which not only enlarged the window but also seriously sped up our little runner — probably by redirecting the tablet’s resources to our game. Photographic proof after the break!

Update 2: We’ll be shooting a second video later in the day to show how the Xoom handles Flash one site at a time.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Adobe Flash Player leaks for Motorola Xoom, we go hands-on (video)

Adobe Flash Player leaks for Motorola Xoom, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 16:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been hearing about the potential flash killer for years, and now a team of University of Illinois engineers is claiming that its new phase-change technology could make the PRAM of our dreams look quaint by comparison. Like so many groundbreaking discoveries of late, carbon nanotubes are at the heart of the this new mode of memory, which uses 100x less power than its phase-change predecessors. So, how does it work? Basically, the team replaced metal wires with carbon nanotubes to pump electricity through phase-change bits, reducing the size of the conductor and the amount of energy consumed. Still too much technobabble? How ’bout this — they’re using tiny tubes to give your cellphone juice for days. Get it? Good.

[Thanks, Jeff]

New phase-change memory gets boost from carbon nanotubes, puts PRAM claims to shame originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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