nitro

Congrats to Junryo W. of Clarement, Calif., for winning last week's giveaway, a bag of Comic-Con swag straight from the show floor.

For the second and final part of our Comic-Con giveaway, we have a legendary prize. No, literally. We're giving away an AT&T LG Nitro HD smartphone signed by Bob Schreck, editor in chief of Legendary Comics, the book-publishing arm of Legendary Entertainment (Christopher Nolan's "Batman" movies, "Wrath of the Titans," "Sucker Punch," "The Town"). Please note that you'll be responsible for securing your own voice and data plan. … Read more

With the incredible success of the original Angry Birds, few iOS gamers were probably surprised that Angry Birds Space would rocket to the top of the iTunes Store's list of paid apps. I've been playing the game quite a lot over the past 24 hours, and though I've noticed some bugs (kill all pigs with one bird to get one star, anyone?), the new gravity fields, interesting levels, and new bird types definitely add something new to the game.

Angry birds isn't the only game in this genre, however. When Angry Birds took off at the iTunes App Store, several developers came out with their own version of the sling-shot game mechanic and many brought new elements to add to the fun.

This week's collection of iOS apps are all Angry Birds-like destruction games, but each have an interesting twist on the original game mechanic. The first offers a heavy metal theme as you smash monster trucks into structures. The second lets you blast ragdolls through intricate levels towards a target. The third mixes game genres to add liquid physics into the equation making for unique challenges.… Read more

Looks like the HTC Vivid isn't the only AT&T phone getting the Ice Cream Sandwich treatment.

The carrier announced today a number of other devices that will be eligible for the Android 4.0 update in the next few months.

These handsets include: the LG Nitro, Motorola Atrix 2, Motorola Atrix 4G, Pantech Burst, Pantech Element, Samsung Captivate Glide, Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Again, it will be a couple of months until the update rolls out, but we're excited. As hot as … Read more

What will Americans do in order to preserve their own green fields and oil refineries? What will Americans give up in order to keep their trees growing and their consciences clear of moral soot?

Not toilet paper, it seems.

For a stunning research study has landed upon my laptop with a conservative thump. This deep dive into American paper use was commissioned by Nitro, a company that, as far as one can tell, "develops intuitive solutions that enable people to work smarter with digital documents."

It seems that a mere 6 percent of Americans are prepared to reduce … Read more

LG's Optimus LTE phone is proving to be a hot seller around the world, racking up more than 1 million unit sales.

Debuting in South Korea last October, the phone grabbed sales of 600,000 units in its native country during the first three months.

From there, the Optimus LTE traveled to Japan to capture sales of 8,500 units in its first day, then to Canada, and finally to the U.S. where it was rebranded the LG Nitro HD, altogether pulling in more than 400,000 in additional sales to take in a cool million.

The phone … Read more

LG, not wasting any time, is off and running with plenty of Android for the new year.

Just days after announcing its first 4G LTE Android tablet, the Optimus Pad LTE, details have emerged for a high-end smartphone.

Based on the rumored specifications, LG may be ready to unveil a flagship Android 4.0 handset next month at Mobile World Congress.

According to information obtained by Pocketnow, the LG X3 should boast a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, a massive 1,280x720-pixel 4.7-inch display, and an 8-megapixel camera. Additionally it should have a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera, 16GB storage, Bluetooth … Read more

The AT&T 4G LTE speeds guessing game is unofficially over. Late last week we began hearing reports of the LTE icon popping up in the notification bars of AT&T's three compatible smartphones--the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, HTC Vivid, and LG Nitro HD.

So, I fired up Ookla's Speedtest.net app to test diagnostics (for ping, download, and upload speeds) on two compatible phones we have in-house, the Nitro HD and the Vivid.

What speed sampling would be complete without caveats? Since the LTE network is a soft-launch and nothing official or necessarily widespread, since the app scores are not the final word in real-world performance, and since this is not intended to be a scrutinized comparison between AT&T and any other network, consider the Speedtest.net results a diagnostic suggestion, with more in-depth testing to come after AT&T cuts the red ribbon on LTE.

With that said, the speeds look promising at their fastest, mostly sticking to the 14 or 15Mbps range for downloads, with spikes into the 30Mbps range and a rock-bottom outlier of just 0.75Mbps.… Read more

If you thought Verizon Wireless was going to slow down on the high-end Android smartphones, you'd be wrong.

Based on recently leaked information, soon we should see an LG phone with 4G LTE connectivity and an HD display. Expected to be called the LG Spectrum, the smartphone should be the heir apparent to the Revolution which launched in mid-2011.

Rumored hardware details for the LG Spectrum match up quite nicely with the recently announced Optimus LTE and Nitro HD (AT&T). Specifications include a 1,280x720-pixel HD display, dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 8-megapixel camera and support for 4G … Read more

It's about time LG got really fired up about Android, and the LG Nitro HD could be just the fuse this phone maker needs to rocket through the ranks.

The Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone contains all the premium parts you'd expect in a superphone. It all starts with a brilliant 4.5-inch high-definition touch screen (1,280x720-pixel HD resolution). Then you have 4G LTE for data speed, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor for internal speed, an 8-megapixel camera for standard shots, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for self-portraits and video chatting, and support for HD (1080p) video recording. Plus, it's got a ton of storage space for photo, video, music, and games right out of the box.

So why isn't this phone scoring off the charts? There are a couple of drawbacks here and there that in my opinion fail to create a device that sweeps them all away. Still, the Nitro HD is a great smartphone, one that will hopefully jump-start LG's aspirations to build amazing, and amazingly competitive, handsets.

See the video, the photos, and the pros and cons in the full LG Nitro HD review.… Read more