Amazon has launched the Android Appstore in Europe. People in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain can now shop for apps on Amazon.

The European launch of Amazon’s Appstore for Android has been expected for a while now. The company has just announced that it is open for business in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. Each country will enjoy a localized version of the mobile app store available now. This brings the popular “Free App of the Day” and other Amazon promotions to many European customers. It also means access to personalized recommendations, customer reviews, and 1-click payments.

Amazon’s Appstore offers something different from Google Play because, as Jim Adkins, Vice President of Amazon Appstore, points out “We evaluate and test games and apps before making them available in the Appstore”. That means a smaller selection, but potentially higher quality apps and games. The exclusive promotions that Amazon runs have been especially popular in the U.S. and so there’s little doubt they’ll prove popular in Europe too.

Existing Amazon customers with Android devices are likely to give the Appstore a try, but the company may need to release the Kindle Fire for the service to really take off in Europe. Amazon’s Android device is not currently available in Europe — it seems content licensing deals could be holding up the release.

Interestingly in Germany, France, and Italy it will be called the “App-Shop”, in Spain it is “Tienda Apps”, and in the UK it is the “Amazon Appstore for Android”.

While Rogers has had LTE available in Canada for a while now, it has been slow to share the LTE love with its faithful companion, Fido. Earlier this year, we looked at hints of Fido getting 4G LTE, and last month Fido even officially stated that 4G LTE was coming soon. Roger’s budget sub-brand is now finally catching up to speed with 4G LTE, with service in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Saint John’s, Toronto and Vancouver all going live today.

So what works with Fido’s 4G LTE service? At the moment, the only official product is the Fido Mobile Hotspot. This device is capable of sharing its 4G LTE goodness with ten different devices. Don’t want to wait for 4G LTE handsets to show up through Fido? You can use any compatible, unlocked 4G LTE phone with Fido’s new SIM cards.

Fido does have further expansion plans for Fido’s 4G LTE service, with intentions to bring LTE network access to 20 million Canadians by the end of 2012. Some of the cities mentioned by Fido for expanded launch of the LTE service include Moncton, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Québec City, Kingston, Ajax, Pickering, Oshawa, Oakville, Burlington, and several others. More information on Fido’s 4G LTE service can be found at their website.

The next volume of Professor Layton's adventures on the Nintendo 3DS may be his last.

In continuing the trend of the series’ relationship with the west, Nintendo and Level-5 have announced a brand new Professor Layton game for the Nintendo 3DS just before the last one is ready to come out in the United States.

During Wednesday’s Nintendo Direct event that saw a pair of unusual games get announced for the resurgent handheld, Level-5 and Nintendo also unveiled Professor Layton and the Legacy of the Super Civilization A. For a series known for convoluted titles, we’ve got to applaud Level-5 for outdoing themselves.

While the trailer for Layton’s latest outing shows off the same sort of whimsical art and puzzling that made the franchise an institution over the past half decade, it’s also a bit ominous. Level-5 claims that Legacy of the Super Civilization A will be Professor Hershel Layton’s “final adventure.” Not the last game in the series mind you, but the last outing for the titular protagonist.

Don’t fret, oh ye fans of enormous brown top hats. Hershel Layton will be back for at least one other game. Level-5 is still tinkering on its Capcom collaboration Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, wherein Layton and Phoenix Wright will take turns pointing at stuff.

Lenovo topped off its IFA 2012 fall announcements with two new tablets and the return of the keyboard dock.

In its IFA announcement today, Lenovo showed off a few new(ish) Android tablets that will hit shelves this fall. There’s new 7-inch, 9-inch, and 10.1-inch designs. Below are pictures and rough specs for each of the tablets, but that’s all we really know at this point.

Lenovo IdeaTab A2107

The A2107 appears to be Lenovo’s complete budget tablet. We don’t have a price yet, but with a single-core processor, it would have to be a lot cheaper than the $200 Nexus 7 to warrant consideration. Even then, it’s iffy to choose a single-core tablet. We look forward to trying it out, though.

• Screen: 7-inch, 1024 x 600 pixels
• OS: Android 4.0
• Processor: 1GHz Cortex A9 single core
• Memory: 16GB, 1GB RAM
• Cameras: 2-megapixel rear, 0.3-megapixel front
• Battery life: 10 hours

Lenovo IdeaTab A2109

Though it looks suspiciously like Lenovo’s S2109, this is a new tablet that may be just the right size with a screen that clocks in at 9 inches, which is quite close to the size of the Galaxy Tab 8.9, one of our favorite Android tablets.

• Screen: 9-inch, 1280 x 800 pixels
• OS: Android 4.0
• Processor: Quad-core 1.2GHz Nvidia Tegra 3
• Memory: 16GB, 1GB RAM
• Cameras: 3-megapixel rear, 1.3-megapixel front
• Battery life: 8 hours

Lenovo IdeaTab S2110

This tablet was shown at CES this past January, but is only now making its way to the United States in full. It’s mostly a reaction to Asus’s semi-popular Transformer tablets, which come with a keyboard dock. Hopefully the dock has been improved since CES, where we found it to be somewhat flimsy.

• Screen: 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 pixels
• OS: Android 4.0
• Processor: 1.5GHz dual-core
• Memory: 32GB, 1GB RAM
• Cameras: 5-megapixel rear, 1.3-megapixel front
• Battery life: 10 hours, 20 hours with keyboard dock