Fifty-two cards, four suits, with an ace and three face cards in each. It can’t get much simpler, right? But it can get a whole lot more complicated. That seems to be the thinking behind Bicycle’s new Jacked Up! cards, which feature an NFC chip embedded in each card. The cards can be read by any smartphone with an NFC chip, plus a free Android app. Separate decks will be sold for Solitaire, Hearts and War. (War? Really?) The Jacked Up! decks were displayed at the International Toy Fair, and should be available in April.

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With Nvidia announcing a compete smartphone platform and nipping at the market leader’s metaphorical heels, Qualcomm isn’t intent on slowing down for a minute. Earlier today benchmarks for the next generation of Snapdragon processor were released, and now the networking architecture to match has been unveiled. Qualcomm’s Gobi framework, intended to match the Snapdragon system on a chip hardware spec, should be coming to phones and tablets later this year.

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Since Google and Samsung first announced the Galaxy Nexus we have been waiting for some official accessories from Samsung themselves, especially for the Verizon LTE model. Thanks to a watchful eye it appears Samsung.com is all set and has recently started shipping the desktop dock for the Galaxy Nexus. Looking at the compatibility list the Verizon model is clearly listed.

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Canonical’s brand-spanking new combination of Android and the Ubuntu Linux distribution is easily the most exciting software development for Android since Ice Cream Sandwich. Basically it packs an ARM-based version of Ubuntu into a standard Android phone, activating it only when docked to a computer via HDMI. The software and basic capabilities were announced earlier today, but a Canonical employee was nice enough to post a live demonstration of Ubuntu on Android to YouTube.

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This is quite possibly the best news I’ve heard all day. EA Mobile is planning to release a brand new game called The Simpsons: Tapped Out according to CNET. EA is expecting this to be one of the biggest mobile game titles of the year for them, and in general. If you are a mobile gamer this should definetaly have you excited.

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IT’s that time again, TouchPad owners: break out the recoveries and clear your download queue. The CyanogenMod 9 developers have posted the latest build of Ice cream Sandwich for the HP TouchPad, this time getting it to the lofty heights of Alpha 1. There’s not a whole lot of differences between this and Alpha .6 a few weeks ago, but the addition of hardware-decoded video should be enough to get you excited. Power users, you know the drill: download the ROM from here, make a nandroid backup and flash. Hop to it.

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If you’ve been looking for a new Verizon 4G LTE smartphone we have the perfect deal for you. Many places offer low prices online but Verizon themselves have joined the party and are now offering two awesome 4G LTE devices for the low low price of just $99 with a new 2-year contract. The HTC Rezound and the LG Spectrum are both up for sale so get yours today.

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