Update: LG just sent out the teaser invitation for their MWC press conference. It clearly says “Into the new dimension” so we fully expect to see 3D phones from LG in a couple of weeks.

It looks like 2011 is shaping up to be the year of the dual-core processor, but another emerging trend in high-end smartphones is glasses-free 3D displays. Sharp already released 3D phones in Japan, HTC might reveal their first in conjunction with Sprint, and now it appears that LG is also joining the 3D party.

European mobile phone retailer The Carphone Warehouse accidentally published a coming soon page for a phone called LG Optimus 3D. The listing has since vanished and no other details were revealed, but LG just announced their own glasses-free 3D displays at CES so it’s believable that a phone could be on the way.

The glasses-free 3D screen that LG Electronics showed off at CES was one of the largest auto-stereoscopic displays (designed for a mobile device) that I have seen and measured in at 4.3 inches. LG’s 3D display uses an applied parallax barrier technology and features a WVGA 800×480 resolution.

“LG sees tremendous growth potential in the 3D mobile display market,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company. “With our key understanding of displays, entertainment and mobile technology, LG is looking forward to debuting this exciting new way to watch 3D movies or play games on your mobile phone.”

This accidental leak is interesting because it comes the day after we learned of NVIDIA’s 1.2 GHz Tegra 2 3D processor. LG was the first handset maker to announce support for the Tegra 2, so maybe they will also be the first to use the new Tegra 2 3D.

We shouldn’t have to wait too much longer to see what LG is up to since their Mobile World Congress press event is on February 14th. Check back in a couple of weeks for some hands-on reports.

The LG Optimus 3D listing that was removed from Carphone Warehouse.

Handmark has teamed up with game development studio Fishing Cactus to port Shift, a puzzle-platformer flash-based game developed originally by Armor Games, to the Android platform. Released today on the Android Market, the new Shift game comes with both a full ($1.99) and lite version, with the ad-free full version containing 55 levels compared to 15 in the light version.

The premise of Shift is simple, though it’s also sure to boggle the mind. You are experiment 32763, and you are trapped in a black-and-white experiment, and you must find a way to escape through 55 challenging levels by jumping from platform to platform in order to obtain the key which unlocks the exit door. The twist? You can click the shift button to literally flip your world upside down, which will be a necessity if you are to safely make your way through all the levels.

Though I’ve only spent a good hour or two (or three) playing Shift, this game is shaping up to become my next Android gaming addiction. It’s one of those games where you sit down to play, blink and somehow 30 minutes have passed. I’m sure there’s little or no replay value after you get through all 55 levels other than continually trying to best your previous time, so you may want to see if you’ll actually like the game by trying out the Lite version before shelling out the $1.99 for the full version. Or, you could always check out the full PC version; the gameplay is essentially the same, and it gives you a good feel for how the Android version plays out.

Because Shift (both versions) is a flash-based game, it requires that you have Android 2.1 or later in order to play. Fortunately, that should be most of you by now. We’ll have a more in-depth review up in a few weeks, but in the meantime, if you download either Shift or Shift Lite, be sure to let us and others know what you think in the comments.

We already went hands-on with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc at CES and previewed its camera enhancements, but now Italian site HDblog has a thorough walk-through of this upcoming device. Sony Ericsson’s latest Android phone might not feature a dual-core CPU, but it offers the latest Android 2.3 firmware, a sleek stylish design, and one of the best image sensors we have seen on a smartphone (SE’s Exmor R).

HDblog notes that the overall UI feels a lot more responsive than previous phones from Sony Ericsson thanks to them toning down the Mediascape and Timescape applications to compact widgets. They also reveal that the device should ship with two color options – silver and dark blue.

Overall we think the Xperia Arc is a solid improvement over the Xperia X10 and it should appeal to the camera buffs out there. It’s good to see that Sony Ericsson made the effort to include Android 2.3 out of the box and hopefully they will do a better job of providing timely software updates this time around. Now if only they could figure out how to include the standard search button in their button layout.

No U.S. carriers have announced support for the Xperia Arc, but AT&T is the most likely destination since they were the only operator to bring the X10 stateside.

Do you think the Xperia Arc brings enough to the table for it to be your next Android smartphone or will you pass it up in hopes of something faster?

It’s no secret that NVIDIA is working on quad-core CPUs for mobile devices, but over the weekend a leaked slide confirmed that Tegra 3 might feature four Cortex-A9 cores running at speeds up to 1.5 GHz. Competitors have announced similar processors, like Freescale’s quad-core 1.2 GHz i.MX 6Quad and TI’s dual-core 1.5 GHz OMAP4440, but NVIDIA is the first that I know of to talk about a quad-core system-on-chip (SoC) with clock speeds at 1.5 GHz.

NVIDIA has never revealed their Tegra roadmap so there is no telling how old this leaked document is, but it suggest that Tegra 2 will get a refresh in spring 2011 called Tegra 2 3D and then Tegra 3 should arrive by fall 2011.

Just like Tegra 2 (AP20, T20), the new Tegras will be available for smartphones (AP25, AP30) and tablets (T25, T30).

The Tegra 2 3D refresh is an interesting chip and is said to go into production in the first quarter of this year. It looks to be similar to Tegra 2, but it boast support for 3D displays and a speed bump of dual 1.2 GHz cores. The leaked document shows that Tegra 2 3D can process 5520 million instructions per second (MIPS), which is a 20 percent improvement over Tegra 2.

Things get even more exciting with the Tegra 3 details. It will feature quad 1.5 GHz cores, 3x faster graphics, ultra low power CPU mode, support for Blu-ray video, and display resolutions up to 1920×1200. The leaked slide says Tegra 3 can process about 13800 MIPS, which is 3x more than Tegra 2. Tegra 3 should begin to sample in Q4, so we should see it inside devices around this time next year.

We already knew that NVIDIA would deliver a new Tegra every year, but if this leaked roadmap is accurate we could see a new chip every six months. It looks like NVIDIA plans to release a completely new architecture each fall and then follow it up with a refresh part in the spring.

Hopefully this roadmap holds up. If NVIDIA can maintain its velocity, I imagine it will force Qualcomm, Samsung, and Texas Instruments to speed up their release cycles.

LG may not be ready to officially unveil the LG G-Slate quite yet, but that doesn’t mean the Android tablet can’t make an appearance in a Korean music video. I’m sure all of you have already seen Seungri ‘s latest video a few hundred times, but if you want to take a peek at it again, we’ve embedded the video below.

If you were hoping to see Android 3.0 running on the LG G-Slate, you might have to check back in when Seungri releases his next music video. For now, we simply get to see the G-Slate’s front a few times and a sneak peek of the 3D camera on the back. The front side of the G-Slate is completely clean, similar to the Motorola XOOM. From the angles, it’s hard to tell exactly how large the G-Slate actually is, but it’s safe to say that it falls somewhere in between the Motorola XOOM and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Price and launch schedule for the LG G-Slate are still up in the air, but we’re hoping that LG will be releasing their Android tablet at a more reasonable price point than the Motorola XOOM. Now that the G-Slate’s external hardware has been revealed, let’s hope LG will share details on the tablets internal specs sometime soon.

The saga of the Motorola Xoom launch continues; today we have a new date and price courtesy of a leaked internal Best Buy screenshot posted by Droid Attic.

The date for the launch — at Best Buy anyway — is February 17th which is in keeping with the Valentine’s Day launch that we have been hearing since the Xoom launch event.

The retail price of $699 is probably at least $100 north of what any of you were hoping to see, but if you look at it as compared to the Galaxy Tab launch price it matches up exactly with that strategy at $30 less than the comparable 3G-enabled iPad. This is showing as off-contract pricing, but if they follow the same model as the Galaxy Tab at Best Buy you will need to at least activate one month of 3G service with Verizon to buy the Xoom.

We’ve known for quite some time that the Xoom will be the hero device for Honeycomb, so Motorola will have at least some period of exclusivity as the only manufacturer with a Honeycomb tablet. Is that going to be enough to get you to crack open that “saving for tablet” piggy bank or will you wait until the market populates with some competition?

Update: Apparently there are some wires crossed over at Best Buy as we’ve got dueling price reports coming in now with the at least arguably justifiable $699 price now joined (according to a Droid Life tipster) by that ugly $799 we heard whispers of previously. If we have any Best Buy staffers in the audience that think they have a handle on what sort of shenanigans the Best Buy internal system is up to we would certainly be interested in hearing it.

Today Google started pushing out an update for the Nexus One that brings the firmware up to 2.2.2. The file is only about 550 KB big and the build number goes from FRG83D to FRG83G, so all signs point to this being a minor update. I haven’t seen the release notes yet, but the update is said to fix the SMS bug that has received a lot of attention lately.

You can wait for the update to hit your phone over-the-air, or you can download it from Google and manually install it now.

To manually install Android 2.2.2 on the Nexus One, perform the following steps:

• Download the update file from Google’s server: FRG83G-from-FRG83D
• Copy the file to the root directory (aka not inside any folder) of your microSD card and name it update.zip Tip: Be careful not to name it update.zip.zip
• Power off your phone.
• Hold down the VOLUME DOWN button and power it back on.
• Wait for your phone to load the skating Androids screen. Scroll down to recovery and press the POWER button.
• When you see the “/!\” symbol, press the POWER button and the VOLUME UP button at the same time. You should be presented with a menu and one of the options should be “apply sdcard:update.zip”.
• Use the trackball to navigate to “apply sdcard:update.zip” and select it.
• When you see “Install from sdcard complete”, select “reboot system now”.

The whole process takes about five minutes and I did not encounter any issues when I flashed it on my phone. If you run into any problems, just leave a comment and we will try to help out.

Unfortunately, there is nothing new to report on the Android 2.3 update that should be starting soon.

Today Google started pushing out an update for the Nexus S that brings the firmware up to 2.3.2. The file is only about 600 KB big and the build number goes from GRH78 to GRH78C, so all signs point to this being a minor update. Samsung tweeted that it fixes the SMS bug that has received a lot of attention lately and that’s about all we know. There is no word on if it fixes the random reboot bug, but we will be testing it out and report on our findings.

You can wait for the update to hit your phone over-the-air, or you can download it from Google and manually install it now.

To install the latest Nexus S build GRH78C, follow these steps:

• Download the update file from Google’s server: GRH78C-from-GRH78.zip
• Copy the file to your phone’s internal storage (/sdcard). Tip: The Nexus S can flash any file so there is no need to rename it update.zip
• Power off your phone.
• Hold down the VOLUME UP button and power it back on.
• Use the volume keys to navigate to recovery and press POWER to select it.
• When you see the “/!\” symbol, hold the POWER button and then press the VOLUME UP button.
• You should be presented with the Android system recovery menu. Select the option “apply update from /sdcard”
• Find the update file (GRH78C-from-GRH78) on your sdcard and then press the POWER button to flash it.
• Wait for the update to complete and then select “reboot system now”

The whole process takes about five minutes and I did not encounter any issues when I flashed it on my phone. If you run into any problems, just leave a comment and we will try to help out.

Android’s most popular game, Angry Birds, will be receiving a special Valentines Day edition, according to a report from German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. In a YouTube video it was revealed that, ”The designers and game developers at Rovio are currently working on new versions of their game, like this update in pink, due to come on the market on February the 14th – Valentine’s Day.”

The developer Rovio previously released their Angry Birds Seasons update which included Halloween and Christmas themed levels, so we have every reason to believe that the Valentines edition will also make its way to the Android Market.

If you are an Angry Birds fan, I’m curious how many of you still play it on a regular basis. Does the game still appeal to you after you finish all the levels or do you only play it when new update packs come out?

Update: T-Mobile has posted an official guide here.

If you have a Samsung Vibrant, the wait for Android 2.2 FroYo is now over. We reported yesterday that T-Mobile would be pushing out an over-the-air update, but it’s actually available right now via a wired update. All you have to do is download Samsung’s update program called Kies Mini, connect your phone to the your computer via USB, and watch the magic happen.

I don’t have a Vibrant on hand to test the update out, but many users have reported success so far. If you run into any problems at all, hit up the official T-Mobile forums for help.

Please let us know how the update performs if you have a Vibrant. How does Flash Player 10.1 perform? Is the GPS performance improved? Did you try making any WiFi calls with T-Mobile’s app?