Clearly the next big battle in the tech world is TV – not in terms of ever growing screen sizes and resolutions, but rather the software and services that power it. With rumours circling about Apple’s apparent entry into the TV market, many manufacturers are taking a wait and see approach. Not Lenovo though – they decided they will build there first TV as well, and it will be powered by Android. Lenovo is planning to release their first TV in China at first, but international markets will get it later. It should be noted that this TV will not ship with Google TV. Instead it will ship with Ice Cream Sandwich, with Lenovo’s own custom skin, and it will pack some serious processing power. Here are some of the specs:

• Snapdragon processor running at  a healthy 1.5 GHz.
• Two screen sizes – 42 and 50 inch. Both LED, Full HD.
• Built in Webcam with 5 megapixel resolution – great for Skype sessions.
• 8GB of built in storage, which is expandable by SD card.
• The remote control will include a touchpad, and it will recognize your voice with a built in microphone.

The TV will still ship with standard HDMI inputs, so you can still connect your set-top boxes. Lenovo must still announce their streaming services that combine with this TV – which makes us think this was rushed to market as an answer to that apparent Apple threat. Which we are not to certain about either… The idea that Apple would move into a highly commoditzed market like TV manufacturing is still difficult to comprehend, but their advantage will lie in the ecosystem that iTunes will provide. But if a Apple Cinema Display costs $1000, we wonder if Apple can crack the TV market where profit margins are lower than ever.

One of the major criticisms of Android phones of late is the apparent lack of official updates that land on the devices. Where some other operating systems keep on upgrading existing phones even a few years after production, Android users in many cases will not get any updates at all. There is a variety of reasons for that – one of the major reasons being customized interfaces or skins that need a lot of work from the manufacturers to be rewritten for new software versions. Luckily Google brings out one reference device, called the “Nexus” about once a year with the launch of major operating system upgrades, and these phone typically get new software updates before any manufacturer.

The latest phone to have the Nexus moniker is Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus – a phone that keeps a pure Android interface free of any skins, and more significantly, the first phone to officially ship with Android 4.0, called Ice Cream Sandwich. If the whole iPhone hype is not for you, the Galaxy Nexus makes a very compelling argument.

“Samsung and Google have closely collaborated to push the mobile experience forward. We are pleased to deliver the best and latest Android smartphone experience for customers with GALAXY Nexus. We will continue to move forward with the Android platform to provide the most compelling consumer experience in the mobile world,” says Paulo Ferreira, Head of Mobile Product and Business Solutions at Samsung.

“Ice Cream Sandwich demonstrates the Android platform’s continued innovation with this release which works on phones and tablets seamlessly (and everything in between). Features like Android Beam and Face Unlock show the innovative work our team is doing, and GALAXY Nexus showcases the power behind Ice Cream Sandwich,” said Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile for Google. (more…)

The Android fans are gonna like this. Up until now, Android has been leading a double life – with one versi0n for phones, and another version for tablets. Compare this with iOS who have been recently giving concurrent software updates with iOS on iPhone and iPad. Well the good news is that Android’s tablet and phone lines are going to be joined in a upcoming release of Android nicknamed “Ice Cream Sandwich”, which will combine the best features of each, regardless of what class of device might be.

While there has been some small leaks with Ice Cream Sandwich, this is by far the most detailed one. But it is quite surprising how this video came out. Apparently a user bought a second hand Google Nexus S on eBay, and he was surprised to find Ice Cream Sandwich installed on the Google reference device. First thing you will notice is the influences of Honeycomb on the handset. While luckily not as “Tron-like” as the first Honeycomb release, the interface is definite shift away from Gingerbread. (more…)