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Sep

Garmin Considers Exiting Phone Business-Yeah, Garmin Made A Phone

Posted by Brad Ganley in Garmin, Garminfone, News

Garmin CFO Kevin Rauckman stated on the 9th that Garmin may be leaving the mobile phone part of its business on the side of the highway. Garmin has released exactly one Android phone that was met with limited success, to put it nicely. They released the Garminphone with an outdated version of Android and put it on the 4th largest (out of 4) wireless carrier in the US (T-Mobile). The cards were definitely not stacked in their favor.

At one point in time, I'm sure this phone would have been a break-away hit but, now that every phone has GPS navigation, the Garminphone has become completely irrelevant.

Sep

WorldMate Releases App For Android - Keeping Up With Your Travel Itinerary Just Got A Whole Lot Easier

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

WorldMate is a company that was created to make travel easier - easier to track, easier to book, and easier to keep up with from the moment you receive that itinerary confirmation email. WorldMate already has apps out for Blackberry, iOS, Symbian, and WinMo, and today it is finally filling in the glaring omission by announcing the official Android app.

Features

The most useful feature, to me and thousands of users of this free service, is the ability to forward those itinerary confirmation emails from any of the popular booking sites to trips@worldmate.com and have them automatically converted into a new travel itinerary, broken down into individual travel items.

Sep

ClockworkMOD Recovery Now Available For The Epic-It Was Only A Matter Of Time

Posted by Brad Ganley in Epic 4G, News

There is talk of rooting and ROMs throughout this article. If you aren't familiar with the process or its pros and cons, you can check out our primers here:

Well, SDX didn't waste any time rooting the Epic 4g, so it should be no surprise that they have now gotten a custom recovery running on it. Apparently it wasn't easy but, after much trial and error, the SDX devs finally arrived at this beautiful, beautiful screen:

They were even so kind as to create a one-click, dummy proof method, the hardest part of which is the installation of the Android SDK.

Sep

LG To Announce New Introductory Level Optimus Phones Today

Posted by Brad Ganley in LG, News

Back in April, LG unleashed the LG Optimus, claiming that it offers "Optimal performance for first-time smartphone users". What this means, essentially, is that the Optimus is on the lower-end of the smartphone market. Its software is engineered to be easy to use and the hardware is affordable. Well, now it has some new friends: The Optimus One and the Optimus Chic. The official announcement is set at 10am in Seoul and, while we don't know too much just yet, these devices do look promising, especially for the lower-end market.

Really, we’ve only been able to nail down specs for the Optimus Chic:

600Mhz processor
5 MP camera (no word on autofocus yet, but it is probably a safe assumption)
A-GPS
Wifi (b/g)
3.2" Display
Froyo

As for the Optimus One, the specs are assumed to be lower.

Sep

Verizon Decides To Make More Bad Decisions - VCAST App Market Is The Latest

Posted by Brad Ganley in News, Verizon Wireless

Well, Verizon is up to their old tricks again. Last time they did something worthy of a head-scratch was just a short time ago, when they forced Bing onto the Fascinate and abandoned the built-in Google bits and pieces for search.

Now they've decided that, in addition to Google Maps, Google Search, and Google Voice Search not being necessary, the Android MARKET is insufficient. Introducing the Vcast App Store!

Verizon seems to think that they are somehow more likely to persuade users to buy apps. While there may be some advantages (carrier billing being the only one i can think of), it is really starting to look like Verizon hates Google.

Sep

Fruit Ninja Coming To Android Wednesday + New Arcade Mode [AppNation]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News

Last Updated: September 15th, 2010

Update: Fruit Ninja is now available in the Market!

At the AppNation conference today, I got a chance to talk to Shainiel Deo, the CEO of Halfbrick, a company most known for its best selling iOS game Fruit Ninja.

Fruit Ninja is an addicting game in which you try to slash as many pieces of fruit thrown in the air as possible, getting bonus points for combo slices, while avoiding bombs at all costs. The biggest appeal of the game is probably its excellent graphics, fluid movements, and the satisfaction of chopping all that fruit in half.

Shainiel made 2 major announcements:

The New Arcade Mode

The new Arcade mode is coming to the iOS version this week and the Android version in the future.

Sep

Gartner: Android Will Be #2 Mobile OS In 2010, Could Be #1 By 2014

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Devices By Manufacturer, News

Gartner, one of the top research and analysis companies in the world, has run the numbers and decided that Android could very well hold the #1 spot by 2014. Nokia's Symbian OS is likely to hold the top spot until 2014, and the analysts aren't certain Android will have taken the lead by then:

Symbian will remain at the top of Gartner's worldwide OS ranking due to Nokia's volume and the push into more mass market price points. However, by the end of the forecast period, the No. 1 spot will be contested with Android, which will be at a very similar share level.

Sep

Nielsen Mobile App Report: Android Users Respond To Advertisement The Most + More [AppNation]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, News

I am live here at the AppNation conference in San Francisco, and after San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom's welcome speech, in which he tried to get a bunch of developers to make apps for the government for free (yeah, riiight), we are looking at a mobile report from Nielsen, called The State Of Mobile Apps.

Nielsen, one of the largest media research companies in the world, compiled a report containing a few interesting metrics, such as:

Most Popular Apps
Application Discovery Methods
Free VS Paid Apps
App Billing Preference
a few Advertising related stats

You can download and read the full report below, but before you do that, I wanted to highlight one metric that I found the most interesting.

Sep

Let The Price Wars Begin : RadioShack Knocks $50 Off T-Mobile G2's Contract Price

Posted by Brian O'Toole in G2 (Vision), News, T-Mobile

It’s not uncommon to see the big chains try to get a piece of the smartphone launch action with price reductions by mail-in-rebate. However, the hassle that this process usually entails doesn’t make things all that enticing to customers. Thankfully pre-orders for the G2 aren’t yet open on T-Mobile’s website, so prospective buyers now have the pleasure in knowing they’ll be able to get in instant discount with RadioShack, bringing the price down to $149.99 on a two year contract.

Of course, this is all window-dressing in reality. The real money is made on that brutal 24 month “agreement” you’re signing yourself up for.

Sep

Purported Internal Document For T-Mobile myTouch HD Leaks

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in myTouch 4G (Glacier), News, T-Mobile

TmoNews has scored what could be a leaked internal document on the upcoming T-Mobile myTouch HD. I want to say up front (although this is purely my own opinion) that I think it could be fake. I'm not convinced of that, but I'm certainly not convinced it's real, either. That said, here's what it provides for specs: