First time accepted submitter Alt-kun writes "Like Amazon last month, Kobo is now making the jump to an Android-based tablet e-reader. Priced at $200 and available on October 28th, the Kobo Vox is set to complete with the Kindle Fire rather than the iPad. While Kobo can't match up with Amazon's sheer mass of available content, it is partnered with various major book sellers and has a good-sized base of existing customers. Also, previous Kobo products have made a point of supporting open standards for media, and that will presumably continue with the Vox. For those who aren't familiar with Kobo: they have little presence in the US, but their e-readers are fairly popular in Canada, Australia, and a number of other countries."

First time accepted submitter misterbarnacles writes "The Microtouch is a mobile media device that aims to become an open-source alternative to the iPod Touch." Deeper investigation reveals that the Microtouch is a nifty little device. Powered by an 8-bit microcontroller with only 2.5K of RAM there is an example ebook reader application. A primitive application framework (for some definition of the phrase) is available as Free Software, and for the hardware hackers the EagleCAD PCB files are published under a CC attribution-share-alike license.

Barence writes "PC Pro has published a comprehensive guide to installing Android on a HP TouchPad using CyanogenMod's alpha Android release. The mod, which is based on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) instead of 3.0 (Honeycomb, the source code of which is yet to be released) 'performs similarly to the Tegra 2-based tablets we've seen from the likes of Asus and Samsung,' according to PC Pro. 'The only real problem we hit was some apps refusing to install from the Android Market because they didn't recognise the hardware,' although there are ways around it."

An anonymous reader writes "In a breakthrough that could aid spies, keepers of medical records, and parents who want to prevent their kids from 'sexting,' a team of Virginia Tech researchers has created software to remotely put smart phones under lockdown. The phones are given permission to access sensitive data while in a particular room, but when the devices leave the room, the data is completely wiped. A general, for example, could access secret intelligence while visiting a secure government facility without fear that his or her smart phone or tablet computer might later be lost or stolen, the team's lead researcher said. 'This system provides something that has never been available before. It puts physical boundaries around information in cyberspace.'" Unless the phone or other device can also take screenshots, or doesn't have that software installed.

An anonymous reader writes "Road traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi and Dubai plummeted last week — and the local police have a theory as to why: drivers' BlackBerrys weren't working. Police in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have claimed that last week's worldwide BlackBerry outage, which frustrated business people around the world who were unable to communicate with their colleagues, had one positive result — less texting and reading of emails by people who should have been concentrating on driving instead. There could be other factors at play, however. For instance, popular UAE soccer player Theyab Awana was killed in a high speed crash near Abu Dhabi in September, amid claims that he was sending a message on his BlackBerry when he hit a lorry. The football star's father, Awana Ahmad Al Mosabi, made an emotional plea to people not to use smartphones while driving, and a Facebook campaign against the use of BlackBerry Messenger while driving has grown in popularity."

Nate the greatest writes "It's been just over a month since the T1 launched and only a couple weeks since it shipped — and it has already been hacked. A video has surfaced that shows the T1 running a number of apps, including a new home screen, AW Launcher, and a couple of different reading apps. It can't run Angry Birds just yet, but this is still great news. There aren't any details yet on when you'll be able to hack your T1, but I bet they'll be filtering out fairly soon."

Several readers sent in a story that's sure to be embarrassing for Samsung. The company has been involved in a drawn-out patent dispute with Apple over similarities between the Galaxy Tab and the iPad. Today, during a court session, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh held up both objects and asked one of Samsung's attorneys whether she could identify which was which. The attorney replied, "Not at this distance, your honor." The distance was roughly 10 feet. The judge then quizzed the rest of Samsung's lawyers. After a brief hesitation, one of them was able to correctly identify the Galaxy Tab.

yesakmac joins the teeming hordes of successful Slashdot submitters, with this excerpt from PC World that says the frenzied effort to port Android to HP's discontinued TouchPad has actually succeeded: "CyanogenMod also released a 'lower your expectations edition' release guide to let you know exactly what is working (or not) under the hood. Modders will be happy to know that basically all the TouchPad's guts are recognized. It supports dual-booting and fake SD cards in case you need to restore the TouchPad. What does not work, though, is the camera, which can only be used for video chat. Power efficiency is still an issue, too. As for the final build, CyanogenMod says they won't be giving a hard date, and that it will be ready when it is ready."

walterbyrd writes "A company called Smartphone Technologies filed the suit last Friday in Texas Eastern District Court accusing the Kindle Fire tablet of violating four of its patents. Smartphone Technologies is owned by Acacia Research, a firm that buys and licenses patents and is seen by many as a patent troll. 'One patent cited in the suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,956,562, simply refers to a method for using a touch screen to enter commands on a handheld computer. Another patent in question relates to a method for storing calendars on a PDA and was initially issued to Palm in 2002.'"

kodiaktau writes "In probably the most important decision Gov. Brown of California will make this year, he has vetoed the bill that would require officers to get a search warrant before searching cellular phones of arrested citizens. This further enables the police to carry out warrantless searches of private property extending into contacts, email, photos, banking activity, GPS, and other functions that are controlled by modern phones. 'He cites a recent California Supreme Court decision upholding the warrantless searches of people incident to an arrest. In his brief message (PDF), he also doesn’t say whether it’s a good idea or not. Instead, he says the state Supreme Court’s decision is good enough, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court let stand last week.'"

The iPad has sold extremely well at a starting price of $500 but "that kind of pricing doesn't work for many tablet vendors," says a story at CNET. And recent price drops reflect this. It's been a rough year for tablet makers, and it's not even Black Friday yet.

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Examiner.com, citing a report at gagdet.ro, about Samsung's upcoming high-end Nexus Prime, the first phone to be delivered with Ice Cream Sandwich. "This version of the Nexus Series (Google's Android flag bearer) runs the next version of Android: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This version is meant to combine Honycomb (Android 3.0) with Gingerbread(Android 2.3) into one OS, that will run on all devices. In addition to the merger of the two OS's, it also changes the Android UI a bit. One major change, is that the icons and the UI is a lot more sophisticated and clean, making even iOS look old and clunky. Also, it removes the requirement for Android phones to have hard/soft-hard mixed buttons, in favor of allowing manufacturers to use whichever type of button they wish. Also, it adds a soft button on the lock screen, to go straight to the camera app."

Perhaps to no one's surprise, the just-announced iPhone 4S has been been leaping off the shelves ... in advance of it ever hitting shelves at all. In fact, as reported by numerous sources (here's the WSJ's version), the company's pre-launch inventory has all been sold — and they only started taking the orders on Friday.

angry tapir writes "HP is investigating how several TouchPads reportedly shipped to end users running Android, instead of webOS. Shortly after HP announced it would stop selling TouchPads and began offering the remaining tablets for US$99, reports surfaced from a few users who say they received TouchPads that run Android instead of HP's webOS software. At the same time, developers have been working on porting Android to the TouchPad, since it's uncertain how much support and development HP will dedicate to webOS in the future."

Local ID10T writes with this excerpt from The Blaze: "In a case explicitly decided to set a precedent, the California Appellate court has determined police officers can rifle through your cellphone during a traffic violation stop. ... Florida and Georgia are among the states that give no protection to a phone during a search. In particular, Florida law treats a smartphone as a 'container' for the purposes of a search, similar to say a cardboard box open on the passenger seat, despite the thousands of personal emails, contacts, and photos a phone can carry stretching back years. But after initially striking down cell phone snooping, California has now joined the list of states that allow cops to go through your phone without a warrant." Interesting additional commentary, too, from UCSD law professor Shaun Martin.

First time accepted submitter Oyjord writes "I am going to China in March, and I was curious what kind of cell phone hardware and plans American travelers use while there. I honestly don't like cell phones (and I currently use the Drug Dealer Throwaway Special Du Jour) but I thought I'd look into one with a good data plan, so I could perhaps take pics and upload them on the spot, and perhaps use the phone's internal GPS as opposed to taking my Garmin along, etc." (Note: it would be great if you include in your answers some idea about their currency — if you're in China right now, say, or if you were there more than a year ago.)

An anonymous reader writes "Leaked screens from Amazon's internal stock monitoring and assignment system (Alaska) has revealed just how popular the Kindle Fire tablet is already. In just 5 days of being up for pre-order there have been 250,000 reserved. That's more than 50,000 per day or 2,000 sold every hour. If that continues to launch day Amazon will need to have 2.5 million ready to ship to meet demand. To put that in context, the original iPad managed to ship 1 million in its first month." The key phrase seems to be "if this level of consumer demand continues" — but given the success of the e-ink Kindle line, that might not be crazy. Do you want one, or not?

UnknowingFool writes "On Monday Microsoft updated webpages to announce a price drop for the Zune pass subscription, and it removed all references to the Zune hardware. This prompted many to suspect the Zune was dead. A MS spokesman then tweeted that the updates were in error and the Zune was not dead. Then MS later admitted that they will no longer produce hardware but would honor any existing orders. It appears MS has trouble with managing their PR."

hypnosec writes "Smartphone maker Sony Ericsson has decided to work closely with developers creating custom Android ROMs for devices in order to learn from them. The company said in a blog post that it has decided to support an open source developer group called 'FreeXperia,' which creates custom Android ROMs based on the CyanogenMod for several Sony Ericsson phones like the Xperia ARC and Play. Sony Ericsson maintained that it does not approve of some of the work carried out by independent developers but was keen to work with people who were creating custom ROMs."

destinyland writes "Amazon's going to disable 3G web browsing on their upcoming 'Kindle Touch 3G' — even though it was a prominent feature of the last generation of Kindles. Amazon will still allow web browsing on the Kindle Touch 3G using a local Wi-Fi connection, but it's one of many unsettling details emerging from Amazon's announcement last week. Apparently Amazon's cloud will now also include a list of personal documents that you're mailing to your Kindle. And the on-screen keyboard for Amazon's bargain $79 Kindles won't be a touchscreen keyboard, so users will have to nudge the controller repeatedly to gradually navigate from one key to the next."