• Android Gingerbread 2.3-powered smartphone with 4G wireless connectivity and 4.3-inch qHD multi-touch display for brilliant video playback
• Dual-core 1 GHz processor; capable of running full Firefox desktop browser with optional accessories; Wireless-N Wi-Fi networking (with optional Wi-Fi Mobile Hotspot service)
• 8-MP camera; full HD 1080p camcorder; front-facing video chat camera; Bluetooth stereo music; 16 GB memory plus 16 GB microSD card; corporate and personal e-mail
• Up to 10.8 hours of talk time, up to 200 hours (8.3 days) of standby time; released in September, 2011
• What's in the Box: handset, rechargeable battery, wall/USB charger, USB cable, 16 GB microSD card, quick start guide

Packing a dual-core processor with each core running at 1 GHz, the sleekly designed Motorola DROID BIONIC smartphone with 4G LTE for Verizon Wireless delivers a mobile Internet experience that's up to 10 times faster than 3G. And with Motorola's innovative webtop application, you can connect to an external monitor via optional adapters or docks (including a laptop dock) to play music and videos on the big screen as well as enjoy full Firefox multi-tab browsing (learn more below).

The 4G-enabled Motorola DROID BIONIC (see larger image). Motorola DROID BIONIC
At a Glance: 4G connectivity

Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

1 GHz dual-core processor

4.3-inch high-res qHD multi-touch display

16 GB memory + 16 GB microSD card

GPS navigation

Wireless-N Wi-Fi (with Mobile Hotspot)

Stereo Bluetooth

Corporate and personal e-mail The Verizon Wireless 4G

List Price: $ 699.99

Our Price: $ 699.99

Click Here For Info About Motorola DROID BIONIC 4G Android Phone (Verizon Wireless)

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Most computers use a built in sound card to play music and sounds. A new soundcard can offer better sound quality and sometimes more connections for recording or transfering audio. This video demonstrates how to fit an internal sound card into one of the white PCI slots found in most desktop computers.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Motorola DROID BIONIC 4G Android Phone (Verizon Wireless)

Do you smell that? It’s the sweet smell of success. Or — well, something. Windows Phone 7 devices aren’t even available to the public yet, but it’s looking like Microsoft may replicate Apple’s iPhone success in at least one important area: fart apps.

Even though the phones aren’t going to launch for a few more weeks, the app store is up and running within Microsoft’s Zune software. And those reviewers and/or employees with devices are downloading and using the first batch of must-have apps. The top-selling app? Farting Dino.

Yep.

I don’t know what’s better: the fact that an app named Farting Dino is the first hit for Windows Phone 7, or that it’s a paid app, and people are actually paying for it. iPhone users have long been in love with fart apps, but almost all of them have been free. Perhaps Windows Phone 7 really is going to change the space.

It’s interesting that even though Apple has since decided that fart apps are no longer kosher, Microsoft has said they’ll be fine with them. That commitment is clearly going to be put to the test early.

[image: flickr/artificialignorance] [via twitter/ai]

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

The Gas Has Been Passed From iPhone To Windows Phone 7: Fart App Tops…

Tawkon, one of my favorite Israeli startups of the past year, was in San Francisco at the Disrupt Alley last week to debut the release of its cellular radiation measurement app for Android. This follows the company’s $9.99 Blackberry version, and its unsuccessful bid to push the same app through the iPhone App Store.

If you haven’t followed our coverage of the company, Tawkon developed a technology that collects and analyzes RF-related data it extracts from a mobile phone. It is then able to display a measurement of the estimated radiation a cell phone user is exposed to when using his or her phone. The “harder” the phone has to work to maintain a cellular connection, the more radiation it emits. So for example, if the phone isn’t near a cell tower, or if its own antenna is obstructed, it will increase power to its antenna, which causes it to emit more radiation.

Available for free, the new Android version of Tawkon includes:

• Real-time Radiation Indication – Thanks to multi-tasking support on Android, a small icon on the home screen changes from green to yellow to red, indicating low-moderate-high levels of radiation exposures.
• Live Prompts & Feedback – Automatic alerts when exposure to radiation rises during a call. Live feedback confirms that suggested actions such as moving to a new location were effective.
• Personal Stats – Find out how much radiation you avoided by using Tawkon during the last call, day, week, month and six months.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Takwon Debuts Free Cellular Radiation App for Android [Disrupt Startup…

Oh, sure -- our international contemporaries have been toying with the Dell Streak for the better part of 2010, but Americans have just recently had their equal opportunity to indulge. It's a mini tablet, or a huge phone. Or both. And sometimes neither. But whatever the case may be on any given Sunday, the 5-inch Streak has caused more of a stir for the folks in Round Rock than any product since the Adamo. For those who eagerly pre-ordered and then not-so-eagerly paid the credit bill upon receipt, we're interested in knowing exactly how things are going so far. Are you still stoked about having a 5-inch phone? Would you have made it any larger / smaller? Changed the casing? Made it available on another carrier? Thrown in a slide-out QWERTY keyboard? Let us know in comments below, capiche?

How would you change Dell's Streak? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Sep 2010 01:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How would you change Dell’s Streak?

How do you know when a Facebook PR person is lying? When their lips move (or they issue a statement!) ba-dum ching!

We’ve been taking a beating today on our story about Facebook working on a branded mobile phone. Just like last year with the Google Phone, lots of people threw tantrums about how we made the story up right up until Google launched their own branded phone, the Nexus One.

And that’s what’s happening today, due in no small part to Facebook PR issuing what looks like a blanket denial of the story this morning. “The story is not accurate!”

Except the story is accurate. Facebook has been working with hardware manufacturers to explore building their own phone. We don’t know the timing, and we don’t know how deep the software stack is that Facebook is contemplating building, but we know that as of very recently the project was alive and well.

Here’s how Facebook is able to issue a blanket denial to a true story and get away with it:

First, give a solid soundbite that everyone will love. “The story is not accurate. Facebook is not building a phone.”

Note that those two sentences sound like they’re supposed to go together, but they aren’t. Technically what they’re saying is that at least one fact in the story is wrong. Also, Facebook is not going into the hardware building business. But what most people read is a flat denial. The story is wrong! Tabloid journalism!

Except, uh oh.

Second, Insert a ton of additional sentences that seem to support the initial dramatic statements. But what they’re really doing is putting in language that they can point to later that shows they weren’t technically lying. “Deeper integrations!” “INQ Phone!”

Third, and this is purely optional, add a good kick in the nuts on the way out. Maybe something about how people tend to exaggerate things to get headlines.

This is the statement that Facebook sent to everyone in the news business today, except us. Despite us asking for it.

So why did Facebook do this? Normally they would just say “we don’t respond to rumors and speculation” when anyone talks about leaks around future products. But this was different. Here’s the reason – they don’t want to freak out Google and Apple and everyone else. They work closely with these partners on on Facebook’s existing applications. A Facebook branded phone may disrupt those discussions. Case in point.

Also, this project is likely just getting started. Two of the three rock stars just joined the company (Tseng and Papakipos from Google, Hewitt has been with Facebook since 2007). It could be a year or more before the phone hits the market. And any number of things could happen to make them kill the whole project off.

All we learned today was that the mobile space is so important that Facebook was willing to lie (while technically just spinning) about their plans. And they were so pissed off about the leak that they took that final shot at us as well. Nicely done Facebook.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Anatomy Of A PR Spin (AKA How To Lie Like A Pro)

Just as I was reading Paul Carr’s latest column about quitting social media, my husband looked at his phone and broke into a huge smile. He is a graphic designer and has long been a fan of Chank Fonts. Earlier that day, he’d taken a picture of a retro-looking podiatrist office, posting it on Twitter with the word “Font-o-licious.” It didn’t go viral. It didn’t become a trending topic. It didn’t get him 1,000 new followers or even attract much attention at all. But it was noticed by Chank Diesel of Chank Fonts who Tweeted “I’m gonna dedicate my next font to that type-savvy podiatrist” and started following my husband.

Here in front of me was one of those serendipitous moments of social media collapsing  space-and-time. These moments don’t change the world, but they’re exactly what made social media so addictive in the first place. Imagine an industry hero of yours who seemed untouchable creating a product just because of a random picture you posted on an ever-moving stream of colliding information that he happened to see. Here, in the guise of my beaming husband, was the perfect articulation for why I think people—even my close friends— who declare dramatic social media bankruptcy were just doing it wrong.

What made social media a phenomenon were moments like these. Passively connecting in-and-out of a persistent conversation with people you know and see everyday, people you know but have lost touch with, and people you don’t know but share interests with. People who in a more efficient world, you might have known. It’s about making relationships more efficient. My parents know what I’ve been up to by reading my Twitter feed, so when I call home I don’t have to answer a vague question like “What have you been up to?” I answer a specific question like “What country are you traveling to now?” If a friend is looking for a job at a given company, I can’t always remember who I know who works there, but with LinkedIn, I don’t have to. And seeing what an old flame looks like on Facebook never gets old.

If these selling points sound horribly cliché it’s because they are commonplace reasons most everyday people use these sites, and indeed, the same reasons why the founders of most social media companies started these sites. But the sites worked too well at amassing fans, friends and followers, creating micro-economies where people sought to cash in on their would-be fame and influence. And that is when the problems—and inevitably the fatigue— started. People competed for how many friends and followers they could rack up and how many RTs they could get in a day, seeing it as evidence of how cool or smart or influential they were. That’s when social media got mercenary and soulless.

Here’s a clue: If you find yourself saying “(Fill-in-the-blank-social-media-site) used to be soooooo much better before everyone was on it”– you are using the site wrong. You are following too many people, you are using it too much, you are strangling the pretty, little bunny. The beauty of these sites is you control how many friends you see, and how many of them see you. So if you used to love it and now hate it, well, you know what they say about when you point a finger. Three are pointing back at you.

Sometimes metrics can be a bad thing and beware of any so-called “social media consultant” who tells you otherwise. What’s the value of a Retweet or a Like? It’s roughly the equivalent to sitting next to someone during a keynote who nods his head at a salient point. Someone hitting a button in front of them is hardly a heady endorsement—nowhere near the impact of someone calling you to tell you about a story he read. That actually takes more than one-second of attention and work.

Everyone touts stats showing that recommendations are the most trusted form of advertising. That’s because in the old world recommendations were inefficient. I had to be so moved by, say, the service at a restaurant, that I proactively called people to tell them about it, or it stuck in the front of my mind solidly enough that when someone asked “Where should we go to dinner?” it came flying out. The power of personal recommendation doesn’t carry over in a world where it’s as easy as clicking a button because the caliber of that recommendation is necessarily lowered by taking out barriers.

Of course not everyone becoming fatigued with social media whored themselves out to anyone who would follow or friend them, bartering likes and retweeting anyone who said something nice about them. Indeed, Mr. Carr locked his account and only followed a core group of friends. His biggest complaint was simply that he used it too much—updating any thought in his head so that he didn’t take time to mull and form that idea or joke until it was perfect, and that he was distracted. That’s a fair point.

But I wonder whether the flood of apps may be making the problem worse, not better. You can have too much of a good thing. After some early security glitches when Twitter desktop apps published direct messages, I decided to only use Twitter.com and update by text message to interact with the service.

That’s downright luddite in my TechCrunch/iPhone world, but by going to Twitter, rather than Twitter always flooding to me, I forced myself to keep my Twitter feed as manageable to keep up with as email. What’s more, when I travel to places like China or have a big deadline, I don’t log onto Twitter for weeks. When I come back it’s still here. Both Twitter and I continue to go about our lives without one another just fine.

I don’t think changing an avatar to green saves Iran. But I wouldn’t say Twitter is making us all more detached and stupid either. I just like life with social media better than life without it, for silly little moments like the one my husband had with Chank Fonts. Same thing I’d say about email or a mobile phone or TiVo or a Blackberry.

I realize that doesn’t make gripping blog copy like Twitter-democratizing-the-world or Twitter-totally-sucking, but I think for most of the average users out there, that’s the Twitter they know and the Twitter that will continue to steadily grow, all this hype and backlash aside.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

If You’ve Got Social Media Fatigue, UR DOIN IT WRONG

By next year, Boku’s co-founder Ron Hirson, predicts that the company will be launching mobile payments for online (non-virtual) transactions and eventually, test programs for brick and mortar purchases. Boku has always wanted to become the PayPal of mobile payments, but has been hindered by lofty carrier rates. Historically, wireless carriers have charged roughly 30 to 40% to process transactions, making it very difficult for mobile payment companies like Boku to scale beyond virtual goods. That dynamic, Hirson says, is quickly shifting.

“We’re now seeing and having partnerships with carriers where the rates are coming down to about 10% which enables us to start moving beyond virtual goods that have no cost of good sold, to things like digital goods which have licensing and then maybe even physical goods which actually have material costs…

Mobile as an opportunity is starting to plateau, minutes have obviously plateaued and eventually data will follow the same. So there’s a need for carriers to explore new revenue opportunities and payments is a great value added service.”

Ten percent is a significant victory, relative to the previous baseline, but Hirson acknowledges that the rates will have to move even lower to support Boku’s grand ambitions. The magic number, he says, is probably near 5%— which he admits may not happen in the near term.

For those who are unfamiliar with the service, Boku (a rival of Zong) works with many game developers like Playdom and Playfish. When a user wants to purchase a virtual item, he enters his cell phone number on a site, the site sends a text message to the phone, the user confirms the transaction with a short reply, and all the charges show up on his phone bill.

For more on Boku’s 2011 strategy and carrier trends see the video above. On Monday, Hirson was also a guest on TechCrunch NOW with Charlie Graham, Shop It To Me‘s founder. Fittingly, we discussed Google’s recent investment in Zynga, the gaming company’s massive revenues, and what it means for Boku (that video is below).

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Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

With Carrier Rates Dropping, Boku Prepares To Expand Beyond Virtual…

WakeMate’s quest to help you kiss your groggy mornings goodbye continues. The Y Combinator-funded startup has become something of a poster child for the mantra “Hardware is hard” — when the company debuted its gadget in November, it promised to start shipping devices the following January. That didn’t happen, and the company didn’t have a concrete date for when the first batch might ship. A few units shipped in April, but the company wouldn’t say how many, so it probably wasn’t a very encouraging figure. Now, it looks like there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel.

WakeMate has posted an update to its blog that indicates that it’s optimistic about having a large chunk of orders out close to the end of the month (though it sounds like that may slip a bit). From their post:

A lot has happened since April, besides what we’ve shown on the blog. To highlight, we’ve:
Lined up a local manufacturing partner for faster turnaround
Designed and implemented a new board layout that gives vastly improved Bluetooth performance as well as battery life
Sourced all parts for said board
Designed and prototyped a new wristband, currently in its final production revision
Expanded and improved phone support
Iterated on the Analytics site, making it more useful and eye-catching
Dealt with regulation, Apple approval, packaging, etc.

So where does this leave us in terms of shipping by the end of July? We remain optimistic—if we don’t make it by month’s end, we’ll definitely get close. We’re addressing a couple minor snags but the hard problems have been solved and it’s now a matter of urging the gears of industry to turn more quickly; something they’re not accustomed to doing. In April, we felt it extremely conservative to say we’d be shipping by July 30th; as any new company can tell you, things never happen the way you think they will and we were no exception.

WakeMate’s product consists of a $50 wristband that you wear while you’re sleeping, which can analyze your sleeping patterns and wake you up at the opportune time so that you can beat morning grogginess (also see the pricier Zeo Sleep Coach). Data from the wristband is relayed to your phone — WakeMate is developing companion applications for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. WakeMate’s delays have resulted in plenty of frustrated users, in part because WakeMate collected a five dollar downpayment for its pre-orders.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

WakeMate’s Long Delays May Finally Be Coming To An End

Regular readers will know that recently I’ve liked to state my bias in the title of my mobile device reviews: I love the iPhone. Some will call that being a fanboy, and that’s fine. But really, it’s just my opinion that the iPhone is hands down the best mobile device out there. If there were a better one, I would use it. But there’s not. So I use the iPhone. And that’s the angle I take towards these mobile device reviews. It’s simple: if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best. Well, one finally has: iPhone 4.

Yeah, if you hate these types of reviews, you’re really going to hate this one.

Before I dive into specifics, I’ll say right away that the iPhone 4 is easily the best mobile device I’ve ever used (notice I didn’t say phone, more on that later). But a lot of you probably already thought you knew I was going to say that. The more interesting question may be: how does it compare to the other iPhones? Or, perhaps even better: is it worth it to upgrade? The short answer is yes.

In my view, iPhone 4 is the biggest leap forward that any iPhone has taken yet over the previous generation. It’s not really any single thing that makes me say that, but it’s the combination of changes to the hardware. The screen is much better. The camera is much better. The video quality is much better. The form factor is much better. The device is faster. It can do more at once (thanks to double the RAM). The battery lasts noticeably longer. And, of course, it has FaceTime.

The main upgrade of the iPhone 3G from the original iPhone was the 3G chip which brought faster download speeds. The main upgrade of the iPhone 3GS from the iPhone 3G was the CPU speed increase and the video-taking capability. All of those were nice upgrades. But again, the iPhone 4 offers much more from a hardware perspective. And that makes it worth the upgrade from an older iPhone, as well as worth an outright purchase if you’re new to the platform.

I wrote down my initial thoughts about the iPhone 4 after playing with it for about 20 minutes after the WWDC keynote in June. This time, I wanted to play around with the device for an entire week, using it as much as possible before I wrote up a full review. Now I have, so here it is.

The Screen

The element most played up by Apple during the WWDC keynote was the iPhone 4′s screen. And rightly so, it’s fairly amazing. The so-called Retina display offers 960×640 pixel resolution at 326 pixels per inch. And it has a great 800:1 contrast ratio. Those specs make it great for both reading text and for watching video content or looking at pictures.

The screen is so sharp that when you’re looking at it, it almost looks as if you’re looking at a sticker overlay that they may put on a display unit at an electronics store. It looks more like you’re looking at a printed out picture than an electronic display.

But here’s the curious thing about the screen: More than a few people I showed it to thought it looked great, but wondered what was exactly so different from the previous iPhone screen. Part of that is because the previous iPhone screen was already good. But then I showed it to them side-by-side with the iPhone 3GS screen and they were blown away.

If Apple really wants to emphasize the screen, I recommend they do the same thing in Apple Store. Of course, then they may have a hard time selling the iPhone 3GS.

But when you do put them side-by-side, it’s easy to see just how much sharper text is on the iPhone 4. And just how much better colors appear. If you bring both close to you eye, on the old one you can see the pixels. On the new one, you can’t. Just look at the picture below — I don’t think I have to tell you which is which.

As I said, previous iPhones already had pretty solid displays, but they had since been passed up by the screens on a few Android devices. For example, I love the Nexus One’s screen, which is 800×480. But the iPhone 4 now destroys that. And, as a bonus, you can actually see it in daylight (which the Nexus One’s use of OLED makes very difficult).

The Speed

The iPhone 4, which uses Apple’s A4 chip just like the iPad, is definitely faster than the iPhone 3GS. However, the most part, it’s not noticeably faster in the same way that the iPhone 3GS was noticeably faster than the iPhone 3G. But it is in some cases, such as photo manipulation. One of my favorite apps is one called CameraBag (you can find it here for $1.99). On the iPhone 3GS, it can take several seconds to apply various filters to pictures in this app. On the iPhone 4, the same tasks take about a second.

Likewise, some games are noticeably faster, even those not yet optimized for iOS 4 or iPhone 4. Also, the few lags that previously existed in things like typing are now gone as well.

When you’re on WiFi, browsing the web can actually seem like a faster experience than doing so from a desktop computer. This is undoubtedly mostly thanks to the proliferation of iPhone-optimized sites. But still, for getting at raw information, the iPhone is now faster in quite a few cases, I’ve found.

On top of the new chip, another factor in the speed boost is like the 512 MB of RAM now included in the device (double what it was in previous iPhones — and double what is even included in the iPad!). But more than speed, this helps with the iOS 4′s new multitasking capabilities. In the week I’ve been using the iPhone 4 with iOS 4, I haven’t noticed the device having to quit any app I’ve loaded that takes advantage of fast app switching. Of course, that’s sort of the point, you’re not supposed to notice this. But with the iPhone 3GS running iOS 4, I have noticed a few times when an app has to restart when I switch back to it.

But the biggest speed difference for the entire device has to be the vast improvements to upload speeds. I like to send pictures I take from my iPhone to Flickr via email. On the iPhone 3GS, this takes a while, as each picture tends to be a little over a megabyte in size. On the iPhone 4, sending these pictures is so much faster — and that’s despite the files being much larger (thanks to the new 5 megapixel camera).

This upload boost is thanks to the iPhone 4′s use of High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), a 3G data protocol which can boost upload speeds by as much as 10x. If you do a lot of media uploading from your phone, this alone may make the new iPhone worth it.

The Antenna

While we’re on the subject of connectivity speeds, there’s no point in beating around the bush any longer — you likely want to know about the antenna issues of the iPhone 4 that have been widely reported.

At first, during regular use, I didn’t notice anything abnormal about the device with regard to its connection. Of course, I also live in San Francisco where AT&T offers up shitty connections as standard practice.

Then I started reading all the reports and decided to see if I could get the signal to drop myself. Sure enough, I could. I even tried it on a second iPhone 4 in a different area — same result. When wrapping your palm around the lower left corner of the iPhone 4, at least on the two devices I tried, the reception bars definitely start to drop.

I also tried making calls and using data while doing this. In both cases I was able to push the connection to failure when I would shove the iPhone into my left palm. Calls would drop and data would stop. When I released from that specific area of the phone, things would start working again.

But then I decided to try something out. I did the same thing with the iPhone 3GS — and guess what? Same results. Granted, it is much hard to push the connection to this point of failure on that device, but it can be done (by wrapping your hand around the entire bottom of the phone, where the antenna resides). Interestingly enough though, when I would do this on the iPhone 3GS, the signal would degrade, but the bars wouldn’t fall. Perhaps this is why no one noticed this issue on the iPhone 3GS but they are noticing it now (though other videos show the bars falling on the iPhone 3GS as well).

Yesterday, Apple finally issued an official response to this antenna issue. The basic gist? It’s a software bug. More precisely, they claim that the iPhone software currently incorrectly shows signal strength to be better than it is. A software update is supposedly going to “fix” that. Of course, that’s not really a fix at all for the actual signal, it’s just a fix for being misleading about it in the first place.

This seems to go against Apple’s earlier suggestion that you hold the phone a different way or use a case (both of which, of course, imply there is something to the idea that the design of the new device impacting the signal). That said, I spent last weekend in Lake Tahoe which has areas of decidedly better AT&T service than San Francisco. There, I didn’t notice the same falling bar issue, even when I held it in the corner (it would sometimes drop one bar, but not more). Others have noted this as well — when you’re in an area with good service, the bar loss doesn’t seem to be an issue. When you’re in an area with bad service, it is an issue. So more accurate software should at least solve the bars being high enough to drop in the first place.

But all that being said, there is still clearly something to this notion that holding the phone in the lower left corner degrades signal quality. My tests show it, dozens of other tests have shown it as well. And Apple even somewhat acknowledges it, saying this is an issue with all cell phones to some degree.

Here’s my take on this (and while I’m no expert, this seems to be pretty common sense): Apple’s software update should alleviate some concern about the signal drop by being more accurate in the first place. But the signal drop when holding the phone is very real — again, just as it is on other devices like the iPhone 3GS. The fact that the iPhone 4 is the first phone with the antenna on the outside of the phone, I have to believe must exacerbate this issue. And this combination of software plus hardware issue is why we’re all talking about this for the first time.

But at the end of the day, all that matters is this: does the device work? While that’s a more complicated question for me to answer than it should be because I happen to live in an area with notoriously bad AT&T reception, the answer is yes. In regular use (so, not holding the device a certain way to try and get it to fail) the iPhone 4 seems to perform the same with regard to data usage as the iPhone 3GS did. Without all the hubbub over the signal issue, I don’t think I would have noticed a problem (aside from day one when AT&T’s network was clearly getting slammed harder than usual).

As for call quality, I think the iPhone 4 is actually a bit better, believe it or not. I’ve been to at least three spots where I couldn’t make a call before, and now I can. This lends some credence to the idea that the iPhone 4 actually has a better antenna than the previous iPhones, despite the fact that it’s now exposed and seemingly more susceptible to signal degradation.

I have also tried using the iPhone 4 with the new bumpers Apple sells for the device, and it definitely seems to help the lower left corner issue. It’s too bad these things coast $29.99 a pop. I know Apple’s current stance is not to give these things away, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t start doing it if the software update isn’t as effective as they hope.

The Design

All this antenna talk is the direct result of something else: design decisions Apple made for the iPhone 4. Ultimately, they may regret the exterior antenna choice, but it’s hard to argue with the overall package. The iPhone 4 is easily the best piece of mobile hardware I’ve ever laid my hands on.

In my initial thoughts (again, after playing with the device for about 20 minutes), I noted that the iPhone 4 made the iPhone 3GS feel a bit like a toy in comparison. Well, if the iPhone 3GS feels like a toy, most other smartphones out there feel like toys from the 99 Cent Store compared to iPhone 4. It’s just at a whole different level.

I happen to have 10 other recently popular cell phones laying around my apartment (dating back to the Motorola RAZR — the phone I used right before the original iPhone). I decided to pick each up just to see how they feel compared to the iPhone 4. It’s kind of a joke. Some feel okay (the EVO and Nexus One), but nowhere close to the iPhone 4. Some feel pure amateur by comparison (the Palm Pre and the myTouch 3G). And some feel like I’m holding a Zack Morris or Gordon Gekko-style brick (the G1). In fact, the best of the bunch was the original iPhone with its aluminum back, in my opinion.

There has never been an iPhone that feels more solid, looks so symmetrical, and has buttons that feel so right. I’m sure someone will tell me there’s a phone out there that’s crafted at least as well (perhaps in one of the European countries). But I have no doubt that if such a device exists, it’s one that 99.99% of us will never see or use because it probably costs thousands of dollars. That may be the most impressive thing about the iPhone 4 — it’s priced to move at just $199 (or $299 — both after AT&T subsidy, obviously).

No other phone in that price range can touch the iPhone 4 in terms of design and build quality. Not by a long shot.

That’s actually the other thing that saddens me about the bumper — it just makes the device feel (and look) cheaper. That said, the bumper is very useful when setting your device down flat because it provides some room between the all glass back and whatever surface it’s on. This glass is supposedly extremely strong, but that doesn’t mean sticky substances can’t muck up say, the back camera.

The Camera

Speaking of the camera, it’s a thing of beauty. Maybe you’ve heard Apple’s marketing talk that “it’s about more than megapixels” — coined because the iPhone 4 has a 5 megapixel camera while rivals like the EVO have an 8 megapixel one. Well, it’s not actually just marketing talk, it’s absolutely true.

I have both devices and the iPhone 4′s camera is definitely better the EVO’s. And that’s just in quality — as previously mentioned, the camera software on the EVO seems to be buggy and often has issues saving pictures. I haven’t had an issue once on the iPhone. The EVO also makes it hard to switch between the back and front camera on the device. On the iPhone 4, it’s a one-click process right there on the screen.

What most impresses me about the iPhone 4′s camera though is its ability to shoot in low light. In that regard, it reminds me much more of my Canon S90, than any other camera phone I’ve ever used. The iPhone 4 includes an LED flash, and it works fine, but I’m tempted never to use it because this thing is so good in low light. (See: the picturea below taken with the iPhone 4.)

Just as impressive as the still camera is the iPhone 4′s ability to shoot HD video (720p). This matches the EVO and other Android phones in terms of quality and it also brings it up to par with the stand-alone Flip HD cams. The quality of HD videos taken with the iPhone 4 is excellent. There are some stability issues if your taking the video while walking, but standing still, things look amazing (see: below).

FaceTime

The other big element of the iPhone 4 Apple is playing up (and, in fact, the only element they’re playing up in commercials right now) is FaceTime. Yes, I know, other phones have done video chat for some time now. But the fact that seemingly everyone is talking about mobile video chatting for the first time with this release says just about all you need to say.

As a technological demo, FaceTime is impressive. It really is one-click-and-it-works provided both parties have iPhone 4s are are connected to WiFi. There’s nothing to set up, nothing to configure. You hit the button and it works.

As a real world usable technology, FaceTime is profound. It’s one thing to do demos for your friends. It’s another when you make your first real FaceTime call. There you are, somewhere in the world, face-to-face with someone else, someplace else in the world. Once the initial cool factor wears off, it’s like your in the room with them. And Apple is ingenious to play this up in their commercial (below).

But what’s even crazier about FaceTime is that Apple says they will open source the technology — something which Apple doesn’t often do. If third-party developers choose to utilize it, it could be really interesting.

Android

During Google I/O this past year, Google didn’t beat around the bush: the updates they were making with Android 2.2 were aimed squarely at the iPhone. The problem that Android as a platform faces (with regard to challenging Apple) is that they don’t have the control over the software + hardware mix in the same way that Apple does with the iPhone. Yes, they may have taken charge of the design the Nexus One — and that is still, in my mind, their best phone to date — but they don’t have the type of industrial design expertise that Apple does in-house. And it seems unlikely that they ever will unless they change strategy.

Android now brings a lot to the table — plenty of things that the iPhone doesn’t offer such as WiFi hotspot creation, true voice search, and tight Google Voice integration. From a technological and spec sheet perspective, Android is impressive — and it continues to get more so. But from a regular consumer and practical perspective, iPhone remains the device to beat. There are just so many things you can do on the device with such ease that are kind of a pain in the ass on Android. It doesn’t appear that Apple is letting Android phase them — they still focus on quality over quantity.

But that doesn’t mean the moves Google is making with Android don’t alter Apple’s selective areas of focus for the iPhone. And I think it’s great that there are two companies playing off each other in that regard. They’re pushing one another to continue to innovate. And that means all of us, as consumers, win.

From a hardware perspective, iPhone 4 rises to the challenge brought by many Android devices in the year since the iPhone 3GS launched. And it surpasses those devices. It offers a better screen, better camera, better speed, and better battery life than any Android device. But I have no doubt that much of that will again change in the next year, as Android continues to rapidly iterate.

And then iPhone 5 will come out, and we’ll be having this discussion all over again.

Conclusion + One More Thing

In conclusion, if you said you were buying a phone today, I would absolutely tell you to get the iPhone 4. Are there antenna issues? Yes, but they don’t adversely affect the overall experience to the point where I wouldn’t buy this phone over all others. And in fact, in normal day-to-day usage they don’t seem to adversely affect the iPhone usage that I’m used to at all (and that’s not so much a statement in favor of Apple as it is a statement against AT&T).

That brings me to the caveat. And it’s a big one. Since the initial launch of the iPhone there have been rumors about the device coming to Verizon — but those rumors are now louder than ever. The current ones suggest a January 2011 launch date for such a pairing.

If I 100% knew that was the case, there is no way I would recommend anyone to buy the iPhone 4 right now. But, just as was the case last year, I simply don’t know that right now — and I’m not sure anyone besides Apple really does (including both AT&T and Verizon). Basically, buying the iPhone 4 right now is a several hundred dollar bet that it won’t launch on Verizon in 6 months. It’s a gamble.

But there is a silver lining if you choose to make the bet. Even if the Verizon iPhone does launch, it should help the iPhone on AT&T, because there will undoubtedly be defectors by the thousands (if not more). Those users switching will ease the strain on AT&T’s network and could actually render it usable at all times again. It really could be a win-win.

Speculation aside, the iPhone 4 is the smartphone to beat from this point going forward. It will be fun to watch Android try to answer and see if they can dethrone the king before iPhone 5. Leading up to iPhone 4, Android has kept inching closer, but this latest device from Apple is the biggest leap forward the product line has taken yet. It’s going to be hard to beat.

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An iPhone Lover’s Take On The iPhone 4

Well that didn’t take long. Not even 24 hours after the iPhone 4 became available online for pre-order, it is completely sold out. Earlier today, reports had AT&T being out of the device. Now the Apple Online Store is out of them too. They’ll still let you pre-order one, but you won’t be getting it on June 24 (launch day). Instead, Apple is saying the next batch of phones will ship by July 2.

The fact that Apple blew through their entire first run of iPhone 4s in something like 20 hours is impressive any way you slice it. But it also begs the question: how fast would the device have sold out if the pre-order system actually worked today? I don’t think it’s a stretch to think the iPhone might have been gone twice as fast.

As we covered last night, when the iPhone 4 first went up for pre-order on Apple’s website, there were massive failures in the system that prevented people from completing their orders. Those failures carried into this morning and even this afternoon and people still were having difficulty ordering the phone. Some were able to order it from AT&T’s site, others weren’t. Some were able to order from the new iPhone Apple Store app, others weren’t.

The system seems to be running smoothly now, but again, if you place your order on Apple’s site, it will state that you phone will ship after launch. The July 2 date currently listed is just 8 days after the current June 24 launch — but that’s also the ship date, so it could arrive a few days after that.

Right now, if you’re hoping for an iPhone 4 before July, your best bet may be to hope Apple releases the elusive white iPhone 4 (which didn’t go up for pre-sale last night) into the wild before then. Or hope that Apple saved a few to sell in stores to those that didn’t pre-order.

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Even With Pre-Order Failures, iPhone 4 Sells Out In Under A Day

Best Buy just announced that pre-sale orders of the iPhone 4 can be placed starting tomorrow, June 15. Apple. Pre-sale orders can be placed at any Best Buy or Best Buy Mobile standalone store nationwide.The iPhone 4 will be available for purchase at Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores June 24.

The iPhone 4 was announced a few weeks ago during Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Its notable features are, of course, the extremely high resolution screen, video chat capability with FaceTime, and the new form factor.

Walmart will also be carrying the phone come June 24, but will not be accepting pre-order. And you can pre-prder your new iPhone through Apple starting June 15. Best Buy was also chosen to carry Apple’s iPad as well.

The new phone, which comes in black or white, costs $199 for a 16GB version and $299 for 32GB. The June 24th date is for the US, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. The rest of the world will get it in July.

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iPhone 4 Pre-Sales At Best Buy Start June 15, In Stores June 24

Yesterday we reported on a music-streaming iPhone application called Rdio that has been waiting for weeks to have an update approved by Apple. Now we’ve learned that this may be part of a new trend: MOG, the music portal that offers an impressive on-demand streaming music service, is also having issues with the App Store. MOG submitted its iPhone application over a month ago, and has heard nothing from Apple since. Phone calls and emails have gone unreturned. And the company is understandably getting nervous that Apple may be thinking of blocking the app.

MOG has a lot riding on its mobile applications — it just closed a new $9.5 million funding round, some of which is going toward expanding its mobile platform. At SXSW it held a press event to preview its iPhone and Android applications, and what it showcased was pretty impressive. For $10 a month, users can stream any song or album they want, and they can locally download entire albums to their phone (which will work even when they lose connectivity) in one tap.

It’s possible that Apple is concerned that MOG’s app is too good. If you listen (and pay for) a lot of music, MOG’s all-you-can-eat service can quickly pay for itself. And it makes tethering your iPhone to your PC every time you want to sync songs a thing of the past. Apple has long been been rumored to be working on its own cloud music service, especially since it acquired Lala last December, and may be worried about getting beaten to the punch. Thing is, Apple has already approved Rhapsody, which offers much of the same music streaming functionality (albeit without the full-album download button) and Spotify.

On the other hand, Apple may just be overwhelmed — it has the release of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 just around the corner, and now has to deal with developers who are upgrading their apps in time for the new OS launch.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this to see how it develops.

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MOG’s Music Streaming iPhone App Is Caught In App Store Purgatory,…

If you're a developer following our coverage of Windows Phone 7 and want to get on that gravy train as early as possible, you'll be happy to know that development hardware will be arriving "very soon." This apparently according to an unnamed Microsoft representative at a Norwegian developer event, where it was also made known that, upon the retail release of hardware, developers will be allowed to unlock five devices for their testing, although Microsoft will continue to make available pre-unlocked dev handsets after launch. Exactly what the unlocking procedure will look like remains to be seen, as does nature of these early developer-only handsets. MobileTechWorld speculates that LG's GW910 will be that handset, and since that company did provide us with the world's first official device running Windows Phone 7, we'd say that money is probably a safe bet.

[Thanks, Frank]

Windows Phone 7 devs said to be getting test hardware 'very soon' originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows Phone 7 devs said to be getting test hardware ‘very soon’

We've been running up and down the show floors here at Computex over the past week, and frankly, we're a bit overwhelmed. And exhausted. But mostly just stoked about chowing down on "fish legs" and "frog balls" at Taipei's own Windows 7-theme eatery. We've been covering the major hits right here on our front page, but our tremendous comrades over at Engadget Chinese have been blazing trails of their own. We all know you're looking for an excuse to brush up on your Chinese anyway, so why not dig in below to catch the best of the rest from a world-class group of folks? Enjoy... er, 享受.

• Samsung N127 running MeeGo
• ASUS CineVibe rumbling headphones hands-on
• MSI U160 netbook spotted with MeeGo
• Aiptek 3D digital photo frame
• Pint-sized HTPC remotes that Americans won't ever see
• Transformers love Computex, too
• Newman PhonePC telephone gets an AMD chip for reasons unknown

More Computex coverage from Engadget Chinese -- it's just a click away.

Computex 2010: the best of the rest from Engadget Chinese originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Jun 2010 04:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Computex 2010: the best of the rest from Engadget Chinese

Over the years we’ve been pitched many thousands of times by startups. Sometimes those pitches are in person. Sometimes it’s over the phone, which works if you have a live website to play with. But all too often we get requests for meetings via WebEx or one of the dozens of competing products. Over the years those products have improved, but the percentage of failures is way too high. It’s always awkward when people are talking about what you would see if the meeting software worked.

The problems with these products are particularly frustrating when we put on a big launch event like TechCrunch Disrupt later this month. We schedule hundreds of live demos in a two week period, stacking them every 20 minutes for days on end. Companies can choose how they want to live screencast their software and demos, and we’ve informally tracked what software they choose and the failure rates.

Skype video, which now has screen sharing, now accounts for about 30% of all demos for us.

The failure rate is near zero and the lag is acceptable even for calls originating from thousands of miles away. It is hands down the easiest way to connect by screen and voice. And it’s completely free.

There are few bells and whistles. It’s only good for one computer to one computer communication, for example, and you can’t view the presenter and the demo at the same time. But the benefits are more than worth it. Just about everyone in the tech community already uses skype for calls and chat anyway. You click to initiate a call and share your entire screen or just a part of it, and you’re off and running. I wish everything on the Internet worked this well.

We are probably going to make Skype mandatory for our future events. The time and efficiency savings are substantial.

What amazes me most is that screen sharing is just a side feature for Skype. But that side feature is way better than the products released by companies that focus on virtual meetings and nothing more.

I like straightforward, reliable and easy to use products. Skype is doing all of that for us right now.

Also, I’ve been using Skype video nearly constantly since my move to Seattle for meetings with people in Silicon Valley that I used to do in person. When you go to full screen view it’s the closest thing to them sitting right in front of you that I’ve seen. Well, other than if they were actually sitting right in front of you. That would definitely be more real than Skype Video, I guess.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Skype Screen Sharing Is A Huge (And Free) Productivity Tool

Earlier today, at the insistence of a collation of media organizations including Wired and Cnet, a judge unsealed an affidavit the iPhone 4G leak case that has uncovered many more details about the case. The documents, which contain the affidavit of Detective Matthew Broad of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, affirm that it was Apple that sparked the police investigation, and offers a timeline of events leading up to the police raid of Gizmodo editor’s Jason Chen’s house. We’ve embedded the full document below, via Cnet.

In the documents, it’s revealed that Steve Jobs personally contacted Gizmodo about getting the phone back (Gizmodo responded that it wanted Apple to officially state that the phone was theirs). It also reveals that Apple has claimed that Gizmodo damaged the prototype iPhone during the course of taking it apart:

“Sewell said that upon returning to Apple, employees attempted to power the phone and found that it no longer functioned. Upon examining the phone, they found the following damage occurred to it as a result of the phone being disassembling[sic]:
1. Broken ribbon cable
2. One screw was inserted into the wrong location and caused an electrical short
3. Back plate snaps were broken.
4. Stripped Screws.”

At one point in the document, the story of how Gray Powell probably lost the phone is detailed (note that this supports the claims by Gizmodo that it was not actually stolen out of Gray Powell’s possession):

“Powell said he sat at the bar with his uncle. He said the last memory he had of the prototype phone was placing it in his bag, which he then put on the floor by his feet. Powell said that his bag was knocked over at one point in time and it was possible the prototype iPhone fell out of the bag onto the floor.

I asked Powell if it was possible that someone stole the prototype iPhone from his bag. He said he did leave his bag with his uncle at one point during the evening when he went to the bathroom and it was possible, although unlikely, that someone removed the prototype iPhone from his bag”.

But most interesting, at least on our first read-through of the documents, are the bizarre chain of events that took place as the investigation closed in on Brian Hogan and Thomas Warner — the two young men allegedly working together to sell the phone after Hogan found it in a bar. Police were allegedly tipped off about the involvement of the two men by their roommate, a woman named Katherine Martinson, who was concerned that she would be considered an accomplice to the young men because Hogan had used her computer to try syncing the iPhone 4G prototype.

“Orloff said that Witness Martinson contacted him due to the fact that Suspect Hogan connected the stolen iPhone to her computer and she believed that Apple would eventually trace the iPhone back to her via IP address. Therefore she contacted Apple in order to absolve herself of criminal responsibility…”

The documents allege that when Martinson tried to talk Hogan out of selling the iPhone because it would “ruin the carer of Robert ‘Gray’ Powell”, Hogan responded “Sucks for him. He lost his phone. Shouldn’t have lost his phone.”

The documents then go on to detail the night of April 21, when Hogan and Warner allegedly tried to hide evidence that tied them to the phone. It’s a bizarre tale. Warner, who had two outstanding misdemeanor warrants, allegedly tried to hide a laptop at a church, and after saying he didn’t know where a missing thumb drive and flash card were, said that they were hidden in a bush in Redwood City. Here are the passages describing the events of that night:

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Unsealed iPhone 4G Affidavit: Phone’s Sellers Allegedly Tried To…

Well the cheese-eaters at Apple will say that your dumb quack app "contains minimal user functionality" and, as a result, deny your application to rock out on their App Store.

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New, Arbitrary App Store Rejection Reason: “Minimum User…

Say you're planning that next camping trip and you need to know whether you're going to be able to incessantly check your work email every 10 minutes -- do you trust a carrier's coverage map of unknown age, origin, and honesty, or real-world experience? If French firm Sensorly has its way, you'll soon be able to answer the latter thanks to the deployment of an app for your phone that continuously measures cellular and WiFi signal strength at your location and silently reports it back to the company's servers where it's compiled into color-coded maps predicting your ability to connect. The concept's very similar to that being undertaken by another up-and-comer that's been getting a good deal of coverage lately, Root Wireless, but the key difference is that Root's system is still in private beta -- Sensorly's mobile app is available right now to anyone who'd like to download it and participate (albeit only for Android; iPhone and WinMo are in the pipe). It seems unlikely that they've got critical mass to provide meaningful feedback in most areas at this point, but if marginal boost in battery drain is tolerable for you, it might be worth giving it a whirl.

Sensorly aims to keep coverage maps honest originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sensorly aims to keep coverage maps honest

Big news for doubleTwist, the iTunes alternative that allows you to manage media for hundreds of devices, including Android phones, the Palm Pre, and BlackBerry. Tomorrow, the company will announce that it has forged a partnership with T-Mobile, which is now promoting it as the supported way to sync media to its line of Android phones. As part of the deal, T-Mobile will begin displaying doubleTwist banners in their retail stores and on T-Mobile.com. And perhaps most important, doubleTwist will come pre-installed on some Android devices, including the new Fender/Eric Clapton myTouch 3G handset.

For those that haven’t used it before, doubleTwist is a media management program that’s both visually and functionally similar to iTunes in many respects, but with one big difference: it will work with nearly any device (iTunes only plays nice with iPods and iPhones). You can drag and drop songs to playlists, sync music, photos, and video to your devices, and share your media with friends using integrated Facebook and Flickr support. In effect, doubleTwist can serve as an “iTunes for Android”. The software is impressive in its own right, but the company has also gotten quite a bit of attention because it was co-founded by DVD Jon, who serves as CTO.

This is a smart move by T-Mobile. One of the most jarring experiences when moving to an Android phone is figuring out how to sync media to the device. First, you have to manually mount the SD drive from the phone’s screen. Once that’s done, you may find yourself half-expecting iTunes to cheerily pop up to help transfer your media, but nothing happens — it’s up to you to drag and drop media from your computer to the appropriate folder on the phone. There are plenty of applications out there meant to help you do this, but it’s a poor experience for users who are trying the platform out for the first time. doubleTwist makes this much easier for new Android owners (it even shows you how to mount the SD card). It may not be quite as robust as iTunes, but it’s going to be good enough for most people. If this proves to be successful for T-Mobile, it wouldn’t surprise me if doubleTwist was adopted by other carriers as well.

One downside to the T-Mobile version of doubleTwist is that it’s missing one of the app’s best features: integration with Amazon’s MP3 Store. The feature, which launched in October, allows users to purchase music from directly within doubleTwist, much as you would with iTunes. doubleTwist wouldn’t comment on why T-Mobile decided to omit the feature, but the company is planning to further expand the software, so hopefully it’s in the pipeline. In any case, you can still download the fully featured version at doubleTwist.com.

Money is changing hands in the deal. Co-founder Monique Farantzos declined to comment on any specifics, but says that doubleTwist licensed its software to T-Mobile and that it’s a “significant source of revenue”. We should also note that while it was previously known that doubleTwist would come preloaded on the Fender myTouch phone, the full extent of the partnership hadn’t been announced before now.

doubleTwist isn’t the only company looking to establish itself as a viable alternative to iTunes. Earlier this month Songbird, an open-source media player/browser hybrid landed a deal with Philips to come bundled with some of its MP3 player devices.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Who Needs iTunes? doubleTwist Partners With T-Mobile, Now Bundled On…

Last night, 200 entrepeneurs and investors from around Silicon Valley convened for the Founder Showcase, a quarterly startup event for seed stage companies that’s put together by Adeo Ressi’s TheFunded. The winner of the event, as voted on by the attendees is a new startup called MightyMeeting. MightyMeeting allows you to use your smartphone to host a PowerPoint presentation while you’re on the go, and also lets you manage your library of Office and PDF files from your phone.

The application seems best suited for people who often have to give presentations at a moment’s notice, but don’t want to be chained to their desks. Here’s how it works: first, you upload your presentation files to the service, which supports PDF and PowerPoint files. You can upload through a web interface, or via Email using a secret Email address. Once you’ve got your presentations in the cloud, you can easily share them directly from your phone using a native iPhone application or a web app (each meeting participant receives a link via Email or SMS message).

But unlike a standard file sharing service, the link you send from MightyMeeting isn’t just a link to the file — it’s actually a link to a presentation that you can control remotely. Clicking the link brings the attendee to a browser-based viewing window on their PC or mobile phone. Then, when you flip to the next slide on your phone, the change will be made on the screens of everyone else in the presentation. You can use a simultaneous voice call to communicate, or an integrated chat function. You can conduct the presentation from either 3G or a Wi-Fi network. And if you want your presentation to go viral for some reason, you can share it with Twitter and Facebook directly from your app.

MightyMeeting sounds like it could be a lifesaver for last minute meetings, but you’re going to have to remember to keep your archive of uploaded presentations current — it would be nice if there was some way to tie this into Google Docs and similar cloud based services. Also see Fuze Meeting, which offers support for mobile presentations.

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MightyMeeting Lets You Conduct PowerPoint Presentations From Your…

Bad news, Droid owners. Android OS version 2.0.1, which all up-to-date Droids are running, has a bug that makes it fairly easy to bypass the phone’s screen-lock security mechanism. The security feature, when working, requires users to input a pattern using onscreen dots before they can access most of the phone’s features (the iPhone offers a similar option).

Exploiting the bug is fairly simple: while receiving an incoming call on a Droid that has its Lock screen activated, you can simply hit the dedicated ‘Back’ button to bypass the lock and jump to the homescreen. This, of course, gives access to the owner’s Email account, cookied web pages, phone directory, and everything else stored on the phone. You can take a tiny bit of solace in the fact that the thief would have to know your phone number or wait for someone to call your phone to exploit the bug, but that’s not particularly reassuring. The issue was first reported earlier today by The Assurer, which says that it is apparently only affecting Android version 2.0.1 on the Droid (which already represents a large chunk of Android’s userbase).

We reached out to Google about the issue, and a Google spokesperson gave us the following statement:

“We are aware of the issue and we’re working to deliver a fix to Motorola Droids shortly.”

Android isn’t the first smartphone OS to fall prey to security bugs like this. In August 2008 a similar flaw with the iPhone allowed people to easily bypass the phone’s lock screen.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Security Flaw Makes It Easy To Bypass Verizon Droid Screen Lock

Today during Google’s Nexus One event, Android lead Andy Rubin revealed something that’s sure to be a relief for Android users and developers alike: you’ll eventually be able to store a vast number of applications on your phone — even large ones — the same way you can on an iPhone. The change will come with a future software update, when Android begins storing applications as encrypted files on the SD card. Rubin didn’t say how long it will be until we see the update, but it’s clear that the team is working to resolve the problem.

Up until now, developers have been hampered by the fact that every Android phone to date has had a relatively small amount of storage available for applications (a couple hundred megabytes as opposed to the iPhone’s many gigabytes). Apps are stored in the phone’s ROM rather than the phone’s removable (and cheaper) SD storage, which grants developers enhanced protection against having their apps against piracy. But it’s also proven to be a handicap.

Many of the iPhone’s most popular applications are graphics intensive, rich games. But these games often require high quality visual assets to go with them. The iPhone handles these fine — you can download massive apps over Wi-Fi or through iTunes sync. On the other hand, while the newest Android phones are certainly capable of rendering high quality graphics, their ability to handle large apps is limited by the phone’s available storage. Yes, developers can choose to download their app’s assets to the SD card after the initial install, but this isn’t a good experience for the end user.

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Android’s App Storage Limit Will Be Lifted With A Future Software…

The whole idea of using your mobile phone’s camera view as a screen on top of which to add geo-specific information (also known as augmented reality) is one of the more exciting areas in the world of mobile apps. Amsterdam-based Layar, one of the companies at pushing the boundaries of this growing movement, just released Layar 3.0, which offers a whole slew of new ways to layer data onto the real world as seen through your phone.

The company opened up its augmented reality browser to developers last summer and more recently added 3D capabilities. In a blog post, the company details how developers are using its augmented reality platform.

One developer created a 3D architectural model of a building in Rotterdam so that visitors to the construction site can see how a superimposed version of it will look on their phones (see video below).

Another one added cut-outs of the Beatles on Abbey Road and other places they sing about. You could do the same with historical tours, adding historical figures and information about events as augmented reality notes which pop up or let you play an audio narration when you are actually there.

Or you could just add Blimps and UFOs over buildings as sort of an augmented reality graffiti.

And of course there is also a Twitter app which shows nearby Tweets, along with the avatars of the people who Tweeted them (at least I think that’s what it shows).

Anyway, it just shows how many different directions developers can take augmented reality apps. Layar wants to attract as many developers as possible as it seeks funding beyond the $1 million it’s raised so far. Here’s the video:

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Layar 3.0 Is Ready To Add New Layers To Your (Mobile) Reality

When was the last time you actually looked in the phone book to find someone’s number? For anyone under 40, the Web has already replaced the phone book with people search. But the listings are not always complete or up to date. One of the largest people directories online, WhitePages, is adding consumer-editing capabilities to make its people database more accurate.

You can now edit your entry, and control to some extent the information that is shown on the site. For instance, you can correct and update any addresses or phone numbers associated with your name. WhitePages also lets you hide your contact information and be contacted instead through WhitePages, which acts as a communication proxy on your behalf. (It forwards contact requests via email or text message).

Since the summer, WhitePages has allowed people to add their own listing, but now they can edit existing listings as well. The crowd-sourced approach is a little like JigSaw for sales contacts, except you are not supposed to edit anyone’s contact information but your own. In the future, WhitePages will allow you to add links to your Facebook, LinkedIn and other social network profiles as well.

This sets a good precedent. Companies that traffic in personal data on the Web should always let the people described by the data correct it amend it, or hide it if they choose. In the end, the Web will end up with much richer data, and consumers will feel like they can at least control what information is out there about them.

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Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

WhitePages Now Lets You Control Your Own Listings

Coinciding with the introduction of the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system, Microsoft has upgraded and launched its free phone backup service My Phone – previously in beta – and added a couple of useful premium features to it.

Despite the fact that the official My Phone blog and Twitter account remain silent for the time being, users have definitely taken notice and started tweeting about it.

If you have a Windows Mobile 6 phone, you can use Microsoft My Phone to backup all your data, including your contacts, calendar, photos and more to a password-protected website. When you switch to a new Windows phone, or you lose (data on) your current one, you can head to the website to restore documents, contacts, music, and anything else you synced in just a few clicks.

The website also gives you an easy way to organize your phone photos, or to search your text messages and anything else you synced to the service. In addition, you get an easy starting point for redistributing media to your Windows Live account or other social networks, either from your phone or the web application. All in all, it’s a no-brainer to start using it if you carry a Windows phone. Most newer Windows phones come with the program pre-installed anyway, but you can also download it to your device on the fly right here.

Microsoft does not charge a fee for using My Phone, although it new boasts a couple of Premium Features which require a charge ($4.99). These features are:

- Ring Your Phone: remotely have your device ring (even if it is set to “silent” or “vibrate” mode) so it’s easier for you to retrieve in case you misplaced it
- Locate your phone: in case someone stole your phone and left it on, this feature will enable the GPS receiver on your device and show it on a map
- Lock your Phone: will lock your phone and display a message (e.g. your name and contact information) in case you have lost your phone and a good soul finds it
- Erase your phone: remotely wipe off all data from your phone

All these features are free to trial for 60 days.

Give it a whirl and tell us what you think.

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Microsoft Debuts Mobile Backup Service ‘My Phone’, Adds Premium…

You know what frustrates us? Someone with their hands on a totally sweet piece of gadgetry who clearly doesn't know what to do with it. Such is the case in the video below, which seems to depict a gentlemen fondling Sony Ericsson's next XPERIA installment, the X2. While there's not much to see of the device itself, the phone is apparently running a fairly recent version of Windows Mobile 6.5, and the company has clearly taken its skinning team to parts of the OS, as the user in the video manages to stumble past some pretty magnificent looking UI trickery. It doesn't seem as dressed up as the X1's Panel interface does, though this likely isn't the final product. Truck on after the break to see the X2 in action, and try to quell your anger as the phone is repeatedly put to sleep during the demo.

[Thanks, David]

Continue reading Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X2 demoed on video

Filed under: Cellphones

Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X2 demoed on video originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X2 demoed on video