Let me start off by saying this: I really rather like the default Android homescreen. It’s simple, it’s functional, and above all, it’s endlessly customizable. Thanks to Google’s “do anything” approach to handling app development, end users have countless tools to trick out their phones anyway they want. That, as anyone who’s ever used MySpace knows, is a double-edged sword: the end results are usually range from the rare and wonderful to the terribly tacky.
The guys over at Larva Labs have taken a different, almost Facebookian approach. Instead of allowing users to directly get their hands dirty, they completely stripped down the Android into a sparse, information-oriented design they call SlideScreen, which looks something like a mashup between WinMo 6.5 today screen and HTC’s minimalist TouchFLO style. I was given the chance to play with a nearly final build of the app, which is slated for general release within the next few days, and for you info junkies out there, this may be exactly what you’ve been looking for.
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While other carriers might finally be dipping their toes in the Android water this month, T-Mobile has been in this game for a long time. They got their first Android phone (the G1) out in October of last year, and managed to launch two more (the myTouch and the CLIQ) before anyone else even had one. It makes sense, than, that they're the first to pipe up with some usage details.
T-Mobile today shared some of these details, along with announcing a number of ways they'd be increasing their support for the Android Market.
Just hours ago, Apple made an announcement that has developers everywhere dancing down their collective, metaphorical street: In-App Purchase is now good to go in free applications. This, of course, comes just months after Apple essentially told a room full of journalists that such ideas were nonsense – that free apps should always remain absolutely free.
Still – hindsight is always 50/50, or whatever that saying is. There were really just too many advantages to allowing it to let it pass by any longer. Freemium applications! Upselling! It made In-App Purchases seem less tacky to the user! Hurray. But there’s one major factor that isn’t quite so obvious; one issue that this, to some limited extent, solves: piracy.
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Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Major Chinese news portal 163 is reporting [Google machine translation] that Apple has finally signed a deal with China Unicom to bring the iPhone 3G to mainland China in October. This is huge news for Apple, which is now to enter a market with around 700 million mobile phone users, the biggest in the world (US: around 270 million).
Following months of negotiations between Apple and China Unicom, "industry insiders" are reportedly expecting an official announcement to be made by the country's second biggest mobile telecommunications company tomorrow in Hong Kong.
