Judge Upholds Preliminary Injunction. No Galaxy Tabs In Germany Until September 9th.

Can Samsung catch a break? No, at least not in Europe. If you’ve been following the ongoing courtroom battle between Apple and Samsung, you’ll know that Apple has won some key victories, namely getting both the Galaxy Tab tablets and Galaxy S/S II phones banned in some form or another.

While the injunction against Samsung’s phones still has a couple weeks before the actual sales ban starts, the Galaxy Tab tablets have already been affected by the original preliminary injunction. And today it gets worse…

RIM Launches Socially Powered BBM Music.

If your head was already spinning from the growing number of streaming radio/music services currently on the market, sit down and take a load off. RIM is getting in the game too with BBM Music…

Review: Verizon BlackBerry Bold 9930

Oh RIM! How far you have fallen. What was once your strongest and most exclusive features — simple, fast, reliable email and communications — have now become common and less of focus. Your hardware has become nothing more than minor refresh after minor refresh in an age of major advancements every 2-4 months. What on earth do you have to show?

Today we’re got the BlackBerry Bold 9930 on Verizon Wireless. And before we dive in we’ll say that we are tingling with the old CrackBerry fanboism that perculated throughout our body 2-3 years back. There’s a lot to love (and many things to still hate) about OS 7. The hardware itself has some quirks too. But you’ll have to jump inside to see where the Bold 9930 shines…and falters…

XOOM LTE Upgrade To Begin In September With Business/Gov’t “Pilot” Group. Consumers Later.

So you picked up a 3G XOOM way, way back in early 2011 based on promises made by Motorola of a soon-to-come hardware upgrade to LTE. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Motorola has dropped the ball. Seriously. 7 months out we’re still talking about “when” the aforementioned hardware upgrade will actually be made available. That is, we were until a leaked email was released.

The email in question allegedly shows that Motorola is finally getting ready to send out instructions for XOOM LTE upgrades. The only catch — business and government users will be first to receive the LTE goodness under the “pilot group” banner. Consumers on the other hand have more waiting to do.

As with previous rumors, the email confirms that the whole process is free to the end user and should take ~1 week. It’s worth noting that business and government users are quoted a 3 business day turn around time. Will this trickle down to consumer upgrades too?

If you’re bored, feel free to poke around the Motorola tracking site that will display any and all XOOM tablets in route to/from Motorola.

Via: Droid-Life

Steve Jobs Resigns From Apple.

55-year-old Steve Jobs has just resigned as CEO of Apple. according to an email sent out to company employees. According to the email, Steve urges the company to put their full support behind COO Tim Cook — whom Steve personally feels should be the next to hold the CEO title. [Update] Tim Cook is the new CEO of Apple. Steve Jobs will remain on Apple’s board as chairman.

Could this be a sign that Steve’s health is finally taking a turn for the worst? We certainly hope not and that he’s merely tired of the rigorous day to day duties.

Official email from Steve Jobs announcing his retirement after the break…

Google Upgrades +1 Button. Now Shares Directly To Google+. Announces +Snippets For Publishers.

Google’s Google+ onslaught has been like a steamroller constantly gaining momentum (and features). But something was missing — direct sharing. Thankfully that feature is now here. Today Google officially announced an expanded functionality for the +1 button that includes the ability to post directly to your Google+ profile wall. On top of that, Google+ users will be able to add their own comments and select the circles they’d like to share with. Sharing is simple. Just click on the +1 button as you do now and click on the “Share on Google+” text in the small box and you’re good to go.

Before today, clicking the “+1″ button put a link on your +1 tab on your Google+ profile. That’s great and all. But we’re pretty sure we’re not alone in admitting we never look at someone else’s +1 tab. What we (and many people) have requested is a Google+ button that acts much like the Facebook share button — popping up a window to allow the user to post directly to the Google+ page, mention friends and add their own content. And now we have it!

Besides the expanded functionality of the +1 button, Google also announced the new +snippets. +snippets is essentially publisher controlled share option that includes an image, link and short description of what you’re sharing. In other words: it’s the exact same thing as above with out custom user added content.

If Facebook wasn’t already hurtin’ for something new and exciting, they sure are now. Full-on sharing via Google+ is now rolling out! Google says that both expanded +1 functionality and +snippets will be live for everyone by the end of the week. If you’re like us (read: impatient) you can get the aforementioned features activated right this second by signing up for Google’s platform preview service.

Demo video of the new features after the break…

QNX BlackBerry Phones Could Gain Android App Functionality.

Call us too assuming but we gathered from RIM’s massive marketing of Android app support on the QNX-powered PlayBook tablet that the same functionality would automatically get pushed down to QNX phones once they eventually ship. But according to a new report by Bloomberg, they are just now “confirming” that RIM has plans to do just that. While we are certainly happy to see some more concrete evidence of what QNX BlackBerry “superphones” will pack, we believe it is Gizmodo’s Adrian Covert that summs up the news best:

“If BlackBerry apps were amazing and abundant, would they even bother running Android apps on their platform?”

He has a point.

Current rumors peg QNX BlackBerries launching sometime in early 2012, though we have heard repeated mentions of RIM pushing for a late-2011/holiday launch.