Today’s mobile news roundup features the end of the Apple-Motorola patent dispute, Samsung’s debut of yet another new smartphone, RIM’s possible plans to split up its business, and more.

Judge ends Apple-Motorola lawsuit

US District Judge Richard Posner, on Friday, dismissed Apple’s injunction case against Motorola Mobility for patent infringement.  The case was dismissed “with prejudice” meaning both parties cannot refile the case but they could appeal the ruling.

“It would be ridiculous to dismiss a suit for failure to prove damages and allow the plaintiff to refile the suit so that he could have a second chance to prove damages,” Posner wrote, adding that he was therefore dismissing the suit with prejudice.

This is a huge blow to Apple and other companies wanting to hinder the progress of other companies by filing patent infringement suits.

“Apple is claiming that Motorola’s phones as a whole ripped off the iPhone as a whole,” Judge Posner added.  “But Motorola’s desire to sell products that compete with the iPhone is a separate harm — and a perfectly legal one — from any harm caused by patent infringement,” he wrote.

Samsung’s new smartphone

Samsung launched their new smartphone powered by Marvell’s PXA920H Single-Chip solution, an advanced, highly integrated 3G platform with TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE communication support designed for multimedia-centric handsets, for China Mobile.

The Samsung Galaxy i8250 features Marvell Avastar 88W8787 wireless chipset, the first high-performance 802.11n multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Wi-Fi + Bluetooth + FM radio combination, as well as Marvell’s RF838, a single-chip 2G/3G dual-mode TD-SCDMA radio frequency transceiver that enables the highest performance and thinnest form factor for consumers.

In other Samsung news, the South Korean company is expecting sales of the Galaxy SIII to surpass 10 million by July, despite struggling with the high demand and component shortage.

“Despite the tough economic situation in Europe and problems with supplying components for the Galaxy S III, the second-quarter earnings will be better than the first quarter,” he said.

Sony’s Xperia Ion

Sony Mobile announced the launch of Xperia Ion in the US for only $99.99 via AT&T.  It’s an affordable Android smartphone that focuses bringing entertainment to mobile phone users instead of focusing on the important aspects such as talking and texting.

“This is not just about launching a device,” said Peter Farmer, the vice president for marketing for Sony Mobile in North America. “It’s about establishing credibility and visibility for Sony in the smartphone space.”

The Xperia Ion features a scratch resistant 4.55″ touchscreen, 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Dual Core processor, 12.1 megapixel camera with auto focus, 16x digital zoom, and LED flash and runs on Google Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).  It brags up to 10 hours of talktime, 400 hours of standby time in a single charge, and 12 hours of listening to music.

RIM to split business

Research in Motion is said to be splitting their hardware business from their messaging network in the hopes of salvaging the company.

The split would allow RIM to sell their struggling hardware division but still keep their most popular service.  Potential buyers are Facebook and Amazon.  Another option for the company is to sell a large stake of the company to a larger business such as Microsoft.  Though nothing has been confirmed by RIM, the company stated that they’re looking into every possible solution to their growing problem.

“RIM has hired advisers to help the company examine ways to leverage the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities, and strategic business model alternatives,” a RIM representative said in an interview.

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity to land in the US

After the long wait, the high end ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity will arrive in the US on July 16th, selling at $499 for the 32GB model and $599 for the 64GB version.  Like the older versions, the detachable keyboard dock will be sold separately for $149.  Good news is, the old dock, if you own a Transformer Prime, is compatible with Infinity.

The Transformer Infinity features a 10-inch, 1920 x 1200 IPS display coated in Gorilla Glass and rated at 600 nits of brightness. The WiFi and LTE versions have different chips; the WiFi features a quad-core Tegra 3 SoC inside while the 4G version features a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor instead.  It also features 1GB of DDR3 RAM and 25Wh battery good for eight hours of use, and runs on the latest version of Android, 4.0 a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich.