In this issue of the Spec Tech: a new Nook, bendable phones, and 4G LTE phones are coming, Apple troubles, and GameStop sells Android tablets.

Nokia and Samsung both announce that they are creating phones with bendable screens. Samsung has not demonstrated their phone, but Nokia showed that bending the phone zooms in and out of pictures. This may seem like an odd gimmick, but this may mean that the screens will be harder to crack if dropped. These phones are reported to be available in 2012.

Google TV got a huge update that users have been waiting for. The user interface is much simpler and now built on the Honeycomb operating system.

This allows users to access the Android Market. Google says that 30 apps will be playable at launch.

The update is available now on Sony NSZ-GT1 and Sony NSX-GT1 TV’s (who comes up with these names?). Logitech devices will receive the update at a later date.

The Post-smartphone era is upon us. A Chinese technology group has created a phone called XPPhone 2 which can run Windows 7 as well as the upcoming Windows 8 operating system.

The phone contains a 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. This company is definitely aiming at replacing computers with phones.

The launch date is expected to be in Jan. 2012 running Windows 7. It will be able to run Windows 8 when that comes out.

Samsung has announced the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first phone to run Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich, will be available on Nov. 17 in Europe—the rest of the world shortly thereafter. It could be released on Black Friday.

Nov. 6 is a huge day for AT&T and its customers. The Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket and HTC Vivid are AT&T’s first 4G LTE phones.

Not only that, but 4G will be available in Boston, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Athens, GA on this day too! You folks from Athens or Atlanta can now have 4G AT&T phones.

The iPhone 4S may have a huge hiccup after all. Many customers have been complaining of draining battery life in hours with minimal use.

A newspaper in the U.K. thinks that the culprit is the “Setting Time Zone” feature. When traveling between time zones a signal is sent from the phone tower, to the phone, and that is the end of it.

In this case, that communication between the tower and phone is not turning off and kills the phone in a few hours.

If this is happening to you, you can turn off location-based reminders and it will save you some battery. Apple is looking into this issue.

Speaking of Apple, the Mac Pro devices may be leaving store shelves. Apple may finally pull the plug on this desktop and focus more on the MacBook Pro and Air devices. I wouldn’t be surprised if iPods s
soon disappeared, or at least all but the iPod Touch.

Barnes & Noble is holding an event on Nov. 7 about the Nook Color. Sources are reporting that it is either a Nook Color 2, or a tablet rival for the Amazon Kindle Fire. There will be more information after the event.

GameStop has had an interesting stab at portable gaming lately by selling refurbished iPods. As of Friday, GameStop will sell three refurbished Android tablets with free games. The tablets are the Acer Iconia Tab, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

They will be pre-loaded will 6 games: Dead Space, Cordy, Riptide GP, Monster Madness, Re-load, and Sonic the Hedgehog CD. Four of the games are playable with select blue-tooth controllers.

When I visited the GameStop at the Valdosta Mall, I did not notice any tablets. Only 200 stores in the US are taking part in this.

I hope registration went well for everyone! Look forward to next week when I review a very special game.

Sources: Cnet.com and Gamestop.com