By Satish |

Friday, February 26, 2010

• Best Buy becomes equalizer for DROID and DEVOUR, selling both for $99.99
• Windows Phone 7 devices will come in three flavors
• Video: Butterfinger makes fun of iPhone Apps, actually makes us laugh
• Is the Nexus One's display inferior to the iPhone's?
• HTC Desire headed for AT&T, Sprint picks up Legend (as Hero2)?
• Final Fantasy I and II for iPhone get release dates
• Sprint suddenly gets all Captain Planet on us with green movement
• Surprise! AT&T might just have the best 3G network in the US
• Smartphone Sales Up 24 Percent, iPhone's Share Nearly Doubled Last Year (Gartner)
• Listen! Grooveshark debuts native Palm webOS app
• Video: Streetfighter IV on the iPhone gets price and release date
• If MIDs still matter, then get me one of these Moblic E7s pronto
• Photos: The birth of an HTC Legend unibody aluminum shell
• webOS 1.4 update coming on Thursday?
• Acer Liquid e comes to North America by way of Rogers Wireless
• DUBMeNow Raises $2.8M for Mobile Business Card Sharing
• Hackers hack goodies from the HTC Desire over to the Nexus One in no time flat
• Google Earth has landed for Android 2.1

Best Buy becomes equalizer for DROID and DEVOUR, selling both for $99.99 Posted: 23 Feb 2010 04:00 PM PST As if gadget choices weren't complicated enough, Best Buy might be making your Verizon Android handset decisions a lot more difficult. According to Best Buy's Facebook page, the DROID is dropping down to just $99.99 with the DEVOUR going for the same exact rate when it's released on February 25. So many choices, so little time! Need some help? If you're eligible for an upgrade or you're looking to pick up one of these devices whilst hopping onto the Verizon bandwagon, check out this video of CrunchGear's initial impressions of the device. Still not convinced? Stay tuned for a full hands-on review of the DEVOUR and maybe your mind will be made up then. Oh, and if $99.99 seems pricey for these hot handsets, you'll be glad to know that the Droid Eris can be had for free with a new two-year activation.

Windows Phone 7 devices will come in three flavors Posted: 23 Feb 2010 03:17 PM PST Microsoft is doing a complete 180 and reinventing the way it handles its mobile presence. When the iPhone was first announced, Steve Ballmer quipped that Windows Mobile was on hundreds of devices all over the world while the iPhone was one operating system on one handset on one carrier. It looks like he and the gang are thinking differently these days. Windows Phone 7 has been such a stark departure from Windows Mobile, which is a good thing, and we're happy to see that the devices are following suit. Instead of slapping a clunky and cumbersome operating system onto a smörgåsbord of devices, Microsoft has decided on three models or chassis for its new OS. Chassis 1 is basically what we've seen so far. It will be a large touchscreen-only device with a 1GHz processor and is slated for release around the 2010 holiday season. Chassis 2 will include slide-out QWERTY keyboards reminiscent of Windows Mobile devices, which is particularly good for folks who still want the clickety-clack of physical keys. Chassis 3 is still a mystery, so let your imagination free. Will it be a slider? Candybar? For Apple and Palm, it seems this strict ecosystem has been a recipe for success. And while I've always had an aversion to Windows Mobile in the past, I'm looking forward to what Microsoft has in store for its future handsets.

Video: Butterfinger makes fun of iPhone Apps, actually makes us laugh Posted: 23 Feb 2010 02:01 PM PST Its been nearly 2 years since Apple launched the App Store. In that time, would-be comedians around the Internet have successfully extracted just two jokes from it. "Fart apps and tip calculators!" Hah! "There's an app for that!" Hah hah. Hah. Hah. Little did we know, there was still one untapped source of hilarity involving the app store left: physical humor. At the end of last year, Butterfinger (as in the Nestle-owned candy) threw a contest challenging people to make a commercial in the vein of their classic "Nobody's going to lay a finger on my Butterfinger" campaign. Though the contest and its resulting videos went mostly unnoticed by the population of the Internet, the winning commercial, "Butterfinger Phone App", is just starting to make the rounds on TV. Ready for a ride on the ROFLcopter? Check out the video below.

Is the Nexus One's display inferior to the iPhone's? Posted: 23 Feb 2010 02:00 PM PST Well – not entirely. After all, it's bright, responsive, and has a much higher resolution. But there is a lot more to making a good screen, and under a detailed analysis it's far from a rout when you pit HTC's bleeding-edge OLED screen against the old-school LCD of the iPhone. Apologies if it gets a bit technical. Here is the basic list of complaints, as investigated here: As has been noted before, the Nexus One uses a PenTile sub-pixel layout, which is a sophisticated new way of creating pixels which changes the layout of color sub-pixels. Each pixel has its own green sub-pixel, but uses an algorithm to "share" red and blue sub-pixels when necessary. Most of the time this won't be a problem, and it can increase brightness and help with pixel density, but it will lead to artifacts in greys and possibly has something to do with the next complaint. Apparently, the Nexus One only uses 16-bit color. You know, the kind of color you had on your PC back around 1998? It has 32 levels each of red and blue, and 64 for green. The iPhone (like most quality mobile LCDs) has 18-bit color with dithering, which allows it to emulate full 24-bit color if you don't look too closely. Sounds like a bunch of numbers, right? Well the chart above should illustrate it nicely, and the people who tested it say it's pretty striking in vivo, and noisy as well. The bit count produces smooth color gradients on the iPhone, where on the Nexus One you'll see banding. If you want to see your pictures the way they actually look, color depth is important. The display on the iPhone is actually significantly brighter, though its contrast is far worse. This is due to the Nexus One's OLED nature, which allows blacks to be truly black (as in, no light there). In the end it's kind of a draw, but the iPhone's display wins by default because greater brightness means more visibility in more areas. I haven't had trouble with my Zune HD outside, but I defer to their lab results. OLED displays, including the Nexus One's, are still very a young technology. This means there are a lot of kinks to be worked out in hardware, software, and drivers. Poor calibration standards at the factory can be obscured by artificial contrast and saturation, but close inspection reveals that "if the Nexus One display were an LCD it would rank among the worst displays we have ever seen in a shipping product." The scaling mechanism used to stretch or shrink images to fit the 800×480 screen is "laughably primitive." If you're not familiar with scaling mechanisms, it's worth reading up on quickly, as you use them every day and likely aren't even aware. For different content, resolutions, and color depths, different scalers perform worse or better, and it seems Google or HTC chose one that just doesn't work very well. It can have a serious effect on image quality and text readability, especially when combined with that PenTile sub-pixel layout. So: strong words, but they seem to be backed up by real data (the shootout's index page is here; the final part will run on March 1st). Remember that the Nexus One's display is also going to be used in a number of other HTC products, like its twin the Desire and likely any other handset they put out with an 800×480 OLED display. The fact is, though, that LCD is an end-of-run technology that has been honed to as close to perfection as it's ever likely to get. LCDs that cost $200 now would have cost thousands just a few years ago. OLED is the future — there's no doubt about that. But in the present, devices like the Nexus One and Zune HD qualify as early adopters. While they impress in some areas, namely those in which the OLEDs outshine LCDs fundamentally (black levels and consequent contrast; power draw), there are still plenty of points on the LCD side of the board. It won't be long before we start seeing much improved OLED displays — we are seeing them already in the form of Samsung's simplified "Super AMOLED" in the Wave, which omits a piece of the display "layer cake," allowing for better brightness and less reflectance. This rapid gaining of OLED on LCD has led to rumors that Apple will be adopting the technology for the next iPhone, which really is a pretty reasonable speculation. I haven't personally inspected the Nexus One's screen for more than minute total, and I don't spend a lot of time around iPhones, so I can't add any anecdotal evidence to this little duel. And it goes almost without saying that if the display works for you, then there's nothing to worry about; this is purely an academic conflict for most. But go ahead and add your data point below. Update: People are noting that the Gallery app has some really bad compression when it loads pictures not at full rez, which would be the source of some of the banding for sure. As I noted, bad picture quality can result very easily from bad software, scaling, and so on. This is stuff Google tends to fix. So much for the banding, which appears to be a software issue, but that's not the only piece of the puzzle. Thanks for adding that info.

HTC Desire headed for AT&T, Sprint picks up Legend (as Hero2)? Posted: 23 Feb 2010 11:45 AM PST HTC seemed pretty confident that the HTC Desire and HTC Legend weren't US-bound when we talked to them at Mobile World Congress. But hey, things change — right? Boy Genius Report has just received word that the two handsets are bound for this side of the ocean, along with details on which carriers might be nabbing them. According to the ever trusty Boy Genius, the HTC Desire will find its way to AT&T's shores some time this May or June. AT&T customers must be thrilled; the competitor's shelves are quickly filling with Android handsets, and all AT&T has to offer is the Motorola Backflip. The Desire might see a few slight physical alterations from the model we saw at MWC, but it doesn't sound like anything major. Word has it that AT&T's Desire will tout HTC's Sense UI — and unless AT&T/HTC have a trick up their sleeves, it'll be the first AT&T phone to do so. Sprint, who already carries the Hero and Samsung Moment, will be picking up the other hot Android device. The Legend, or Hero2 as it may be called on Sprint, may also differ from what we've all seen on the Interwebz. No surprises there, as the original Sprint Hero is easily distinguishable from its GSM counterpart. Alas, there is no time frame for the Hero2 — but with the way things have been leaking lately, that'll probably spill out before too long.

Final Fantasy I and II for iPhone get release dates Posted: 23 Feb 2010 11:30 AM PST Since we've spent two posts covering Street Fighter IV, a game that will presumably be terrible to play on the iPhone, I thought it was only fair to give a bit more love to a game that should be awesome on the iPhone. Actually, two games: Final Fantasy I and II. We knew they were coming (see trailers/screenshots here) – but now we know when they're coming. And it's surprisingly soon! According to PocketGamer, we can expect both releases to hit this Thursday. In just two days, we'll see a game the likes of which have never been seen by any mortal. Well, except for when these games were released on the NES.. or when they were re-released on the Game Boy Advance.. and then re-re-released on the PSP. Okay, they've been seen a whole friggin' lot of times – but come on, holy crap Final Fantasy on the iPhone. Unlike some of the past re-releases, this won't be a bundle deal; you'll have to buy each one separately. Just how much damage that might mean to your wallet is still a mystery, as neither game's price has been revealed just yet.

Sprint suddenly gets all Captain Planet on us with green movement Posted: 23 Feb 2010 10:53 AM PST Being eco-friendly should definitely be high on the priorities list for electronics manufacturers and service providers, so I'm pretty happy to see that Sprint is doing its part to make our planet a nicer place for future generations. Just in case you're the apathetic type when it comes to the three Rs (recycle, reuse, reduce!), Sprint has put some incentives into place for you. Sprint just laid out a list of over 900 phones that it will buy back from almost all manufacturers and carriers. If you're looking at your old Sanyo, beaten to death as it surely is, and wondering whether it's worth it, go findout! Depending on brand and condition, Sprint will be paying anywhere between $5 and $300 in store credit to recycle your junk. You can find out online how much your phone is worth, and/or take it to a retail store where you'll receive instant credit for immediate use. Aside from taking in your phones from the days of yore, Sprint is also making sure that it deals with manufacturers who are adhering to strict green guidelines. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says: Today I am proud to announce that Sprint is the first U.S. wireless carrier to establish a set of green design criteria for consumer devices. Moving forward, every handset vendor who manufactures handsets to operate on Sprint's networks must produce handsets that meet or exceed Sprint's new green design criteria and specifications. It looks like my favorite childhood cartoon hero has been manifested into a mobile phone carrier. Weird.

Surprise! AT&T might just have the best 3G network in the US Posted: 23 Feb 2010 10:33 AM PST We may give AT&T a bit of grief for the fact that their network essentially curled up into a ball and cried for two years after the launch of the first iPhone, but they've been dumping a ton of change into improving things over the last 8 months — and it looks like its helped. A lot. The crew over at PCWorld ran a fairly in-depth series of tests across 13 major cities in the US, comparing 3G download and upload speeds and network reliability across AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint. The hands down winner? AT&T. AT&T's download speed averaged nearly double that of the competition, and the same goes for upload. From Baltimore to Seattle, AT&T rarely dipped below 1,000kbps, while the competition rarely climbed above 1,000kbps. Average reliability (as tested by continuous 1-minute performance tests) leveled out at 92% for T-Mobile and Verizon, with AT&T and Sprint coming in just a wee bit higher at 94%. This is a huge change from when PCWorld ran a similar test 8 months ago, when AT&T's reliability was puttering out somewhere around 64%. Of course, this is solely a performance test. Other important metrics — such as coverage maps — don't come into play. Either way, keep it up, AT&T – we (and everyone else on the Internet) may give you flack at every opportunity, but it certainly seems like things are on the up and up.

Smartphone Sales Up 24 Percent, iPhone's Share Nearly Doubled Last Year (Gartner) Posted: 23 Feb 2010 08:27 AM PST Last year, Apple's iPhone nearly doubled its worldwide market share of smartphone sales to 14.4 percent, up 6.2 points from the year before, according to the latest market share figures put out by Gartner. The iPhone still trails behind Nokia's Symbian-powered smartphones (No. 1), which saw their share decline 5.5 points to 46.9 percent, and RIM Blackberries (No. 2), which gained 3.3 points to end the year with a 19.9 percent share. Remember, these are worldwide estimates. In the U.S., both Blackberry and Apple are much larger than Symbian. And when it comes to mobile Web traffic, Apple and Android dominate with 81 percent share. According to Gartner, Android phone sales jumped 3.4 points (to 3.9 percent), but Android is still smaller than WIndows Mobile or Linux. Those mobile OSes, however, saw their market share drop 3.1 and 2.9 percent, respectively. Palm's WebOS barely made a mark with 0.7 percent share.

Listen! Grooveshark debuts native Palm webOS app Posted: 23 Feb 2010 06:55 AM PST Online music service Grooveshark is today announcing the launch of a native app for devices running Palm webOS, or in other words the Palm Pre and Pixi phones. With the app, Grooveshark users gain access to its vast on-demand song catalog – the number of tracks in there runs in the millions – but also to the personal playlists and favorites they and other users have cultivated on the kick-ass music service. The app should be available 'very soon', according to the startup, although VIP users (who pay $3/month) can get early access. The native Palm app will complement Grooveshark's mobile offering, which to date includes apps for Android and Blackberry devices. Its iPhone app, in the meantime, was said to have been finished for release back in July 2009. So far, there's been no sign of an appearance in Apple's App Store, although we hear some news about that may be coming soon. Here's a video from Grooveshark demonstrating the app in action. The man apologizes for his 'oily after-dinner fingers'.

Video: Streetfighter IV on the iPhone gets price and release date Posted: 23 Feb 2010 03:04 AM PST I myself am in the "This will never work"-camp, but Japanese video game giant Capcom is preparing a special version of their hit title "Streetfighter IV" for the iPhone/iPod touch. The announcement was made last week, making the iPhone version the first on a mobile device (the arcade game has been ported to the PS3 and XBox 360 only so far). And today, Gamepro was able to lay their hands on Streetfighter IV (see their video below), revealing the final version will feature a total of eight characters: Ryu, Ken, Guile, Blanka, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, M. Bison and Abel (the console games have 17 playable characters). Capcom also said Streetfighter is scheduled to hit the App Store next month with a price tag of $9.99. Graphics-wise, the version Gamepro was able to test looks pretty impressive, but I have massive doubts regarding control and playability – even though Capcom is behind this. There's a reason why the iPhone doesn't have many fighting games. Here's the video:

If MIDs still matter, then get me one of these Moblic E7s pronto Posted: 22 Feb 2010 06:48 PM PST What with tablets looming large on the horizon, one could be forgiven for thinking MIDs might be reaching the end of their usefulness. But when you put something like this in front of me, I can't help but get excited. ABXY buttons and a real D-pad? Yes please. 4″ 800×480 screen, 8GB of built-in storage, 600MHz ARM A8 processor? Man, this thing will be a mobile gaming powerhouse if it isn't super expensive. The Moblic E7 is still pretty much a cryptogadget right now, though. No pricing or availability is indicated on the Moblic page, so I'm just going to guess randomly. I'm going to say… $600 and available in the Summer, probably not in the US. Doesn't that sound realistic?

Photos: The birth of an HTC Legend unibody aluminum shell Posted: 22 Feb 2010 05:29 PM PST Just last week, HTC announced the Legend. As the epic name implies, it's essentially the "Hero 2"; its got the jutting chin, the rounded corners, and HTC's software signatures all over it. The primary difference, outside of a minor (but still worthwhile) hardware spec bump, is the design of the body; carved from a single block of aluminum, it's ridiculously light weight, super strong, and drop dead gorgeous. While we somehow managed to over look it whilst roaming (almost absurdly) huge halls of Mobile World Congress, our buddies at MobileBurn spotted a display case showing off examples of the unibody shell as it steps through the manufacturing process. Alas, there weren't any nice little placards detailing the trip from point A to point B. I wouldn't worry too much; even if there were placards, they'd probably all just read "Lasers." Check out MobileBurn's gallery here.

webOS 1.4 update coming on Thursday? Posted: 22 Feb 2010 11:38 AM PST Back at CES in January, Palm announced that webOS 1.4 and all of its video recording talents would be hitting Pres and Pixis around the world starting in "February". Flash forward a few weeks, when a supposed snapshot of an internal Sprint scheduling sheet indicated that it would all start rolling out on February 15th. February 15th has, of course, come and gone — and our Pres remain un-updated. Fear not, however – if the rumor mill doesn't fail us a second time, we can still expect the update to roll out this month. With only 6 days left in the month, any stab in the dark has a pretty good shot of being correct. However, the guys over at PreCentral say they've been tipped by a Verizon know-all who says that the roll-out has been pushed back to this Thursday, February 25th. Keep your eyes peeled and start tapping that "Update" app come Thursday, and be sure to let us know when it goes live.

Acer Liquid e comes to North America by way of Rogers Wireless Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:38 AM PST Acer recently announced its growing presence in the Android realm and Rogers was quick to snap up the manufacturer's latest device – the Liquid e. If you can get past the drug-related name, the handset doesn't seem to sound so bad on paper. When the Liquid e hits Rogers, it will be the first Android 2.1 device in Canada assuming the Motorola Milestone doesn't get the update first. And while Acer doesn't have the reputation in the mobile handset business like Motorla does, the Liquid e does have a faster Snapdragon processor and holds its own everywhere else, albeit a smaller screen. Rogers doesn't have an official release date and no pricing, either. So if you're holding out for one of these, try to find something to pass the time until things get official.

DUBMeNow Raises $2.8M for Mobile Business Card Sharing Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:00 AM PST "Bump is just a gimmick for young people" says DubMeNow CEO Manoj Ramnani. DubMeNow ("Dub" for short) is a real business, he implies, and he can prove it. Dub has been on a tear the last few months in all aspects of their business. They've got real revenue: over $2.7M projected for this fiscal year. They've raised over $2.8 million in funding thus far, led by Syncom Ventures with other undisclosed angel investors participating. Furthermore, they have found traction in the education market and are soon-to-be deployed to over 750 Universities as a contact-sharing option for students. Their mobile application, DubMeNow, has been downloaded nearly 1 million times – still dwarfed by the 7 million of their Y Combinator- and Sequoia-funded competitor, Bump. Bump and Dub are in a battle to become the de facto contact information-sharing application for mobile phones. Bump is clearly kicking ass in terms of users, and much of that is due to the love they've gotten from Apple and through PR. But Manoj doesn't care – he argues that real revenue and partnerships are going to serve Dub better in the long-term. That statement may be suspect, but there's no doubt that Dub is making headway. Recently, Dub has created partnerships with DataTel and Moodle. DataTel is the 3rd largest ERP vendor for universities. Together, the two partnerships mean that over 1,000 universities will have access to Dub's platform as a way of sharing contacts among students and faculty. Furthermore, they've announced partnerships with SXSW and Higher Logic, as a way for conference-goers to share information easily. Dub was founded 19 months ago by a group of engineers who wanted to create a platform for users to share contact information. Their major product, originally available only on iPhone, launched less than 1 year ago. Founder and CEO Manoj Ramnani came to the US pursuing an MBA at George Washington University, and recently sold a mobile software services company. Mobile business cards is a real problem and I definitely want to see some company – whether it be Dub or Bump – succeed. I'm sick of carrying around wads of paper in my pocket every time I go to an event, and then fumbling through the stack to figure out the e-mail address of that one person I want to talk to. That said, there's a long way to go before we as a community standardize on one application – and it'll be interesting to see which one becomes successful.

Hackers hack goodies from the HTC Desire over to the Nexus One in no time flat Posted: 22 Feb 2010 09:59 AM PST Back when we first got word that the HTC Desire was essentially a slightly upgraded Nexus One with a bit of customization on HTC's part, we knew there wasn't much to worry about for recent Nexus One purchasers; the very vast majority of the Desire's upperhand was all in the software, which was bound to be hacked over eventually. What we didn't know, however, was just how fast it would happen. The handsets not even released yet, but its goods from the Desire have already been stripped down and almost entirely ported to the Nexus One. Paul over at MoDaCo managed to dig up the ROM, and they've since been pushing out build-after-build, each with a bug fix here and a new feature there. HTC's Sense UI is in place, Flash in the browser is working and, at this point, it seems like the lingering bugs won't be lingering for long. It's nothing you'd want to dive into with a twitchy finger or a faint heart, but you can find all the necessary materials over here.

Google Earth has landed for Android 2.1 Posted: 22 Feb 2010 09:42 AM PST When the Google Nexus One was announced, there were several cool new features unveiled for the device and Android 2.1: interactive wallpapers, 3D graphics and support for Google Earth. The latter wasn't available at the time, and there was no date set, but it looks like it's available on Android Market now. If you have Android 1.5 or 1.6, don't bother. Not to burst your bubble, but your device doesn't have the resources needed to power such an intensive application. Users reporting the app's availability have all been Nexus One owners, which means this is a 2.1-only app so far. DROID owners will have to wait for the 2.1 update, which seems to be taking longer than most would have wanted or expected. There's nothing official yet from the Google blog, but we'll be sure to keep you updated when the announcement is official.