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Have you ever been annoyed by SMS spam that attempts to convince you to pay for new Paris Hilton ringtones or something else you probably don't want? It appears that Verizon Wireless has too, as they have filed a federal lawsuit outlining a fraudulent SMS scheme that targeted its customers.
If you are an indie developer who has had success with iOS apps, your prospects of porting your work to Android may have just improved. Social gaming platform OpenFeint and Chinese game operator The9 have committed unknown portions of a staggering $100 million fund to help move things along. The two companies will review games based on quality, downloads, and the strength of the game developer to determine who the lucky beneficiaries will be.
It appears that a major glitch like the recent SMS bug can help spur on support even for an ancient (in Android years at least) phone. The original Motorola Droid will start receiving an OTA update today, sporting several crucial messaging-related bug fixes. Update FRG83G brings the Droid's Froyo version up to 2.2.2.
Say you are shopping for a new car and the dealership that you were sure was going to have the perfect one for you turned up with only lemons? You want to hit up another dealership, but you don't know where to start. Now you can pull out your Android phone, open the new Cars.com app and find the ideal auto for you. Are you Dealing with a car salesman who swears the one you like is the last on the lot? Open up the cars.com app, check the dealer's inventory, and - BAM! - call him on his bluff.
In an internal memo leaked from SCK (the Radio Shack subsidiary that sets up wireless kiosks at Sam's Club) it appears that the Droid X2 is on its way very soon, and it may not be much of an upgrade over the original. The note to employees says that kiosks can expect to see the Droid X2 (which showed up at the FCC recently) "this week."
We know Samsung will be unveiling a new tablet at CTIA later this month, and all signs point to their showcasing an 8.9" Galaxy Tab. The same number, 78910, which was displayed in a promo last week, has appeared again on a new image posted on the manufacturer's Facebook page. It will almost certainly be measured at 8.9" because Samsung debuted the first major Android tab at 7" (the original Galaxy Tab), and has announced a 10.1" model (the Galaxy Tab 10.1) - leaving 8.9" as the likely proportion of the upcoming slate.
Yesterday, we heard that yet another (unconfirmed) HTC Thunderbolt "release date" was a big dud, but today, we have some even more disappointing news for eager LTE customers: Verizon chief technology officer Tony Melone said that customers will have 4G phones in their hands "by the end of the second quarter." Yes, that would mean by the end of June - probably not anytime soon. While Melone intended to highlight their pursuit of excellence in this interview, I think most of us can already hear the collective groan from Verizon customers who have been anticipating the upcoming HTC Thunderbolt.
Calling all Android fanboys: we have some news that might make you puff your chest out a little bit more than usual today. Spacetime Studios, developer of the popular cross-platform game Pocket Legends, says that they make more money from Android than they do from iOS.
With cell phones being so completely immersed in our daily lives that many of us can hardly remember a time when we didn't use them, home phone lines have increasingly gone the way of the dodo. With monthly cellular bills that frequently top $100, having another expense for something that is deemed largely unnecessary just doesn't compute. Innovative communications company Teltub is attempting to bring back the home phone line by using Google Voice to give users home VoIP service for a mere $5 per month.
Opera Software, makers of the popular browsers for desktops and mobile devices, today unveiled a mobile storefront for web apps called the Opera Mobile Store. The store, which racked up 15 million users during its February beta release, is available now on Android (as well as several other mobile operating systems).
Google has responded to the alarm raised by an Android security expert of a bug related to the Android Market that could have caused a lot of trouble. The security hole was related to the recent implementation of the Android Web Market, and would have given hackers the ability to install malicious software fairly easily.
If you have used Google in the last few months, you may have noticed a new feature that allows you to see a small preview of a web page in search results without having to click on it. This feature, Google Instant Previews, is now available on Google mobile versions of Google search.
Last month we told you about the Immersion MOTIV platform, which would allow developers to have much more control over the way phones use haptic feedback (the way your phone vibrates). Up to this point, Android haptic feedback has been a very cut and dry affair: it turns on, it turns off, sometimes it's on a little longer, and sometimes it isn't. Immersion, the SDK of which is now available, gives devs the tools to make this a much more varied experience.
News comes this morning that Deutsche Telekom has been having talks to sell its T-Mobile US unit to Sprint in a deal that would combine the third and fourth largest US carriers. Deutsche Telekom would reportedly still have "a major stake" in the newly merged company, so this would be seen as more of a merger than a selloff.
An interesting little tidbit came across to us in an otherwise ordinary posting on Amazon's app developers' blog. While developers will have the option to use DRM or not in their apps, those that do use the digital licensing service may present problems for those users who are temporarily without an internet connection.
We may have just seen the reasoning behind Google's announcement last week that they were shutting down VoIP service Gizmo5. Apparently a SIP address has surfaced that allows those with an SIP-to-SIP account (such as sip2sip.info) to call Google Voice users for free. While this may not sound Earth-shattering at first, this is most likely an early sign that true Google Voice VoIP (that many users have been eagerly anticipating) is on its way.
In a very interesting find, Google's yet-to-be-announced cloud music streaming service actually seems to be active and working on certain users' Android phones. Only rooted phones that have a hacked version of the Honeycomb music player installed are able to access the service.
In what could be construed as a white flag being waved before even marching into battle, a new report is saying that HTC will only ship one million of their upcoming Flyer tablets between its launch (which is still unknown) and August. The news comes from a Chinese language newspaper, which also reported that the new slate would set buyers back $600.
You can chalk up another false rumor on the list of "impending releases" for the HTC Thunderbolt. The latest speculation to be debunked is that the March 10 date that had been teased is a no-go, according to a leaked Verizon chart picked up by Droid Life. The internal memo shows the much-delayed Verizon phone falling sometime after the iPad 2 launch (which is March 11).
A feature that has been long-awaited by some Android users has now been added to one of the most practical (and free) apps out there. Google has just announced on their mobile blog that their Android Navigation feature (part of the Google Maps app) is now incorporating current traffic information into the routing that it predicts for you.