Samsung introduces three new Wave smartphones, featuring Bada 2.0

A new wave of Bada phones has been announced by Samsung, all featuring Bada 2.0 – Samsung Wave 3, Wave M, Wave Y. By the looks of it, Samsung seems to have partially adopted the new naming scheme of the Galaxy family, with the Wave 3 the odd-one out – the flagship and successor to the Wave 2.

The Bada 2.0 system brings a host of changes, such as improved multitasking, and you can check out the below video for more details about the latest update to Samsung’s proprietary OS, which also brings voice recognition, direct Wi-Fi, and NFC support to the platform.

All three devices visibly also feature Samsung’s freshly announced ChatON IM messaging service. The three Wave phones are 3G capable, and carry on the Wave family’s aesthetics from previous generations, all full touch devices with metallic bodies. The top-end Wave 3 comes with a 1.4GHz processor, a Super AMOLED display, Wi-Fi direct, and surprisingly, a document viewer. It also features Samsung’s Social and Music Hub interfaces. Also surprisingly, only the two lower end devices, the Wave Y and M, actually support NFC.

More details, hopefully including pricing and availability, should be revealed at the IFA 2011 exhibition in Berlin this week.

LG Optimus One gets Gingerbread update; Optimus 2x, Optimus 3D to follow soon

We had been hearing about a Gingerbread update for the LG Optimus One for quite a while. Finally, some good news - LG has started rolling out the update for its Optimus One smartphones. It may be recalled that the update had been delayed at numerous occasions. The update was expected to come in the month of May soon after LG announced its plans for the roll out of Gingerbread upgrade. However, the update was not launched as per schedule due to unknown reasons. Check out our previous coverage on the update here.

The upgrade will be available through LG's desktop smartphone client, and not through the Android Market as reported previously. Though there is no official word on the availability of the update; several reports have confirmed the roll out. According to reports, the update will be available for the Indian users by the end of September this year.

If reports are to be believed, the Gingerbread update is already available to some manufacturers internationally and new shipping Optimus One devices are being loaded with the Gingerbread 2.3.3 update. Meanwhile, reports suggest that the other recently launched LG devices such as Optimus 2x andOptimus 3D will also get the Gingerbread update soon.

Easily Control Screen Brightness on Android Devices with InvisiBright

To save battery life we generally keep Android device’s screen brightness manually at lower levels. But when outdoor we need to readjust the brightness level to maintain readability. To do this we can go to display settings and then increase or decrease the brightness. Another way to do it easily is using the power widget. The power widget makes things simpler but it does not provide full control over brightness. It allows you to increase or decrease brightness in few levels. InvisiBright is a smarter way to perform this task.

InvisiBright is a small android application that allows you to increase or decrease brightness in two ways. You can either do it by tilting the phone upwards or downwards i.e. by using the phones accelerometer or by touching and sliding the phone screens up and down. Unlike the power widget this application provides you full control of brightness.

After installation the icon will appear on notification bar. You can select it first and then perform the action using pre-defined method.
Download: InvisiBright

Download Foursquare for Android [Latest Version]

For people who love to travel a lot and wish to share their experiences, Foursquare is the best android application to do so. It not only allows you to share locations you are in but also allows you to view visiting places of friends.
Foursquare is just updated in android market. This will take your usage experience to new levels.

Features Included in the new Foursquare Update

• New redesign for titlebars and tabs, check in button added to titlebar.
• Explore redesigned with specials and more.
• Added support for managing Facebook and Twitter sharing from Settings page.
• Venue photos gallery redesign.
• Share photo with venue when checking in.
• Added option to save photos to SD card from Settings page.
• Viewing items in notification tray clears push notifications in notification manager.

Download: Foursquare Updated Version

Optimize Android Performance With AutoKiller Memory Optimizer

Worried about your Android device slowing down? Well, is a true fact with most of the android users specially people with low end devices. Low end Android handsets are equipped with less RAM. So, it is quite obvious for devices to slow down with more number of services andapplications running in the background. These applications are only removed from memory when there is a shortage to other newly opened applications.

AutoKiller Memory Optimizer is a smart application that can help you speed up your Android device. It’s better than using an application manager as closed tasks keeps popping up again and again. AutoKiller fine tunes memory internal memory routines and also provides you with lot of tweaking options.

With AutoKiller you can set memory limits on number and various types of applications. Separately you can also control services and processes running background. While using it and stopping unnecessary you will also save your phones battery life noticeably. It works on rooteddevices and is a highly recommended application, especially for lower end Android phones.

Create and Manage Sound Profiles in Android Devices

Managing a phone audio profile is easy. What you need to do is just make different profiles for use. Well, this thing is not the same for Android devices. The default profile manager on Android allows you to control several volumes like the system, notification, ringtone and media volumes separately. But this is a big trouble at times. Specially, when you are in places where you expect your phone to remain silent, even a small pop up of notification sound can put you in great trouble.
Audroid is a small audio manager for android devices. This is a useful utility for all android devices. It allows you to create separate sound profiles in Android phones. It is similar to creating sound profiles in previous Nokia phones but sadly Android lacks it as of now.

This utility helps you to create 6 different profiles which can be selected and applied any time easily from the home screen. You can try out the free version. But the paid version gives more benefits.
Features of Audroid Audio Manager

• Adjust the status of 6 Audio levels independently.
• Create and restore different Audio Profiles. [ONLY PRO].
• Create shorcuts of your Profiles on Android Home [ONLY PRO].
• Localization in 9 different languages.

Download: Audroid Free


Download: Audroid Paid

Easily Edit and Annotate Photos on Android Smartphones

Editing images is fun and a necessity of all times. Specially when you can add annotations to your friend’s picture taken in some party and share them. Editing images is very easy when done on desktop or laptops. But what if you want to edit or create images while you aretraveling and are away from your system. If you are an Android Smartphone user then this task is very simple and interesting with Skitch.

Skitch is small free image editing tool from Evernote. It can be installed on android version 1.5 and above. It is extremely easy to use. The initial screen consists of three options. You can directly capture image from camera, open images from gallery to edit or create new images.

Some basic tools provided for editing and creating images are a color chooser with thickness control, pencil tool, highlight tool, arrow tool, selection tool, text tool and predefined object creation tool like spear, straight line and rectangle.
Using Skitch is a great experience and you can directly share you images with friends.
Download: Skitch