Greg Kumparak is the Editor of MobileCrunch.com, and has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. You can follow him on Twitter here.Our own John Biggs already gave the Verizon Droid a quick hands-on earlier today – but in the endless rush of things, he didn’t get a chance to walk it through a proper unboxing ceremony. Somewhat magically (albeit a bit later than we would have hoped), a Droid also happened to show up on my doorstep this morning, so I went ahead and captured the whole undressing for all to see. Enjoy!
![Screen shot 2009-10-28 at [ October 28 ] 3.05.44 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-28-at-October-28-3.05.44-PM-173x300.png "Screen shot 2009-10-28 at [ October 28 ] 3.05.44 PM")
A few weeks back, we shared a video by Swedish Design agency Ocean Observations which demonstrated a rather clever (but arguably useless) concept: Exposé for the iPhone homescreen.
We shared that video on a whim, and the resulting conversation and comments were outstanding. As a result, the same design firm has since churned out two more iPhone-related concept videos: Coverflow Multitasking, and Dashboard Widgets. Just like the last time, we’re left wondering: would you use these?
You know the words, folks – sing it with me:
♫ Lets all go to the lobby, lets all go to the lobby, lets all go to the lobby, and get ourselves a discount on concession stand goods via our cellular telephones. ♫
Sure, those aren’t the words to the jingle as we know it – but they might take over, eventually. This morning, turn-key mobile coupon service bCode announced a partnership with Sprint and in-theater advertising group Screenvision to bring bCode’s mobile coupon kiosks to over 500 theaters nationwide.
![Screen shot 2009-10-28 at [ October 28 ] 10.13.08 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-28-at-October-28-10.13.08-AM-173x300.png "Screen shot 2009-10-28 at [ October 28 ] 10.13.08 AM")
When we heard the news that the BlackBerry Storm2 would be launching on Verizon on the same day as their much heralded Droid, we got a gut feeling that the Storm2 would fly pretty much under the radar all day. And sure enough, it has.
So, let this serve as a reminder for anyone who’s itchin’ for Waterloo’s latest who wasn’t camped out this morning: the BlackBerry Storm2 is now available for $180 bucks on a 2-year contract in both the online and meatspace stores – even if it seems like Verizon doesn’t really want you to notice.
![Screen shot 2009-10-28 at [ October 28 ] 9.47.52 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-28-at-October-28-9.47.52-AM-144x300.png "Screen shot 2009-10-28 at [ October 28 ] 9.47.52 AM")
Hurray! Not only is today “Droid Day”, but it also just so happens to be “New Sony Ericsson phone with a name no one can pronounce” day! Happy NSEPWNNCP Day, everyone!
Sony Ericsson’s present for today is the Aino, an 8.1-megapixel’d, WiFi’d, tri-band HSPA’d (so it should work with certain US GSM carriers – that is, AT&T), with a lowly 1000mAh battery and a 432×340 display.
As the endless brouhaha ringing from all corners of the Internet has proven, AT&T (or Apple, or whoever takes the blame in the end) really dropped the ball on this Google Voice thing. Whether it was rejected outright or shelved indefinitely, competing parties have been quick to play on their delays.
First, Palm essentially put third-party Google Voice dialer gDialPro on its shoulders and carried it across the finish line by ensuring that it was one of the first (and still one of just a few) applications to land on the webOS App Catalog. Now, Sprint has come along and done something rare: they’ve dropped long-established fees. With Google Voice’s new keep-your-number feature in mind, Sprint will be doing away with the call forwarding fees associated with third-party voicemail services come mid-November.
Flixster, a social networking site for movie fans, is doing pretty well for itself in the mobile space. Name any smartphone platform, and there’s a good chance that the Flixster app has spent some time on it’s top download charts. iPhone? Yep. BlackBerry? Yep. Android and Palm webOS? Double yeps.
Earlier today, the company shared with us the news that they’d crossed over a fairly monumental landmark, along with the details surrounding updates for their apps on both Android and BlackBerry OS.
As any member of the Greg Kumparak Fan Club (Hey! It exists. They have T-shirts. And buttons.) should know, I was a bit of a Helio geek prior to jumping on board with the Crunch family. My interest weened pretty quickly once Helio got snatched up by Virgin Mobile, as it seemed like their efforts with the property would be few and far between. I wouldn’t have wagered, however, that they’d be taking steps backwards.
That’s exactly what they seem to be doing, however. We’re not sure exactly when this happened, but it was recently brought to our attention that the Helio Ocean 2 — which just launched back in February — no longer appears on Virgin Mobile’s list of available phones. If you want an Ocean, you’re stuck with the now ancient original.
![Screen shot 2009-10-27 at [ October 27 ] 10.17.07 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-27-at-October-27-10.17.07-AM-630x382.png)
There we were ranting about Google selectively sharing Android 2.0 without making it available to developers en masse, and then they went ahead and did just that. Beginning immediately, Android 2.0 support is available in the Android SDK.
Don’t expect it to be available (at least not through any official means) on any device until the Motorola Droid launches, which all signs indicate will happen sometime in early November.
Here are the big, user-facing changes:
![Screen shot 2009-10-27 at [ October 27 ] 8.54.38 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-27-at-October-27-8.54.38-AM.png)
Pretend, for a moment, that you’re one of the creative minds at Smule; you and your team have had a series of back-to-back successes, and your audience has come to expect a certain things of you. They expect the utmost highest design quality, for it to be music-related, and — perhaps worst of all — some level of maturity. When expectations are high and narrow in focus, how are you supposed to unleash your creativity?
If you’re Smule, you go and establish a second company as your first company’s evil twin. Then you release an application involving zombies in bikinis.
Well, this is a bit of a strange twist. For the first few months after launch, the development mentality surrounding Android was a developer’s dream. Huge chunks of the operating system were made open source, the development team was pleasantly transparent, and the roadmap clearly sketched out the trails ahead. Then they released Donut, and all went more-or-less mum. It was no secret that Android 2.0, codenamed Eclair was to follow – but what such updates would contain was anybody’s guess.
Well, Google’s finally ready to share the innards of Eclair with the world. And by “world”, we mean a small group of developers hand-picked to attend an invite-only, NDA-required development event.
Ah – another day, another Android rumor. As Android fleshes itself out into the torrential go-to OS for smartphone manufacturers that we’ve all hoped it would, we can expect to see more and more Android rumors rambling about. In other words,
According to TheUnlockr, the phone you’re looking at above is none other than HTC’s first Snapdragon-powered Android phone, the Passion for Verizon. That seems a bit strange for a couple of reasons:
![Screen shot 2009-10-26 at [ October 26 ] 9.50.26 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-26-at-October-26-9.50.26-AM.png)
In just about every other movie or TV show we watch, at least one of the characters (if not half the cast) is rocking the iPhone. For example: Have you seen Chuck? If not, you definitely should — it’s a great show — but it has more Apples than Granny Smith.
Sooner or later, one of these shows is going to have a reason to destroy an iPhone on camera. Up until now, the prop folks have only read had two options: Smash a real iPhone to pieces, or recreate the iPhone in one-off prop form. Depending on the size of the production, either of those options might be a bit too pricey. Enter: the iPhone dummy.
Looks like Verizon might not be the only one getting the Moto Droid. A few days ago, we wrote a post highlighting the fact that a GSM version of the oh-so-hypetastic Motorola Droid (otherwise known as “Sholes” or “Tao”) had cleared the FCC runway. At first, we got a bit excited and misread the details, reading them as if that GSM version of the Sholes had AT&T-friendly 3G bands built in. It didn’t (it was the European GSM version) – but this one does!
![Screen shot 2009-10-23 at [ October 23 ] 1.23.00 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-23-at-October-23-1.23.00-PM.png "Screen shot 2009-10-23 at [ October 23 ] 1.23.00 PM")
Much like everyone thinks they’re the best driver in the world, everyone thinks they’re great in the sack. Maybe you’ve got the Kama Sutra down like the back of your partner’s… hand; maybe you’ve used that internet connection to amass a few external drives full of “training material”. Whatever arts you’re trained in, the question has almost undoubtedly popped into your head during the heat of the moment: “Am I good at this the best lover in the world?”
Well, friends, to fall back on an almost-stale cliche that I promise we’ll use only a few dozen more times: there’s an app for that.
It’s almost depressing to see how far out of their way Verizon is going — knowingly or not — to tone down the launch of the BlackBerry Storm2 on their network. The normal pre-launch fanfare (Mailers and posters and contests, oh my!) is non-existent. At this point, they’re not even giving the device its own launch day.
Hello, gorgeous! What a nice way to wake up on a Friday morning. You roll out of bed to make yourself some eggs, hop online to start the daily rituals, and bam! Shots of the unreleased, Android-powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 are sitting in your inbox.
You hear that rumbling? That’s the sound of mobile internet usage exploding.
Sometime tomorrow, Opera will be releasing a couple of interesting usage statistics for what is one of the (if not the number one) most popular browsers in the world, Opera Mini. They were nice enough to fill us in on the details a bit early, and to give us a green light to share them with you tonight.
So there you are, cruising down the road in your new Honda Civic. The sun’s beating down on the arm you’ve got casually hanging out the window, the wind riding up your sleeve. Then that damn song starts blasting out of your iPhone again — you know, the one that you’ve heard 53 times on the radio this week. “No more!”, you think to yourself, “I refuse to listen to this song again. Now, where’s that ‘Next Song’ button?” You jam your finger around aimlessly, searching for an impalpable beacon in the sea of glass that is the iPhone touchscreen. Frustrated, you glance down at the device – and BAM! You just hit a bus full of orphans.
If only you had Faceplant’s EasyPlay! EasyPlay for the iPhone and iPod Touch wants to save buses full of orphans by enabling full iPod playback control via no-sight-needed gestures.
About an hour ago, we received a mysterious package from Verizon bearing the somewhat-gorgeous, somewhat-creepy red eye that the Motorola Droid is now known for. We, of course, could hardly wait to tear it open – but not before we put up a shot of the box to give you guys a chance to guess what was inside, first.
Some guessed that it was a T-shirt; others guessed that it was a human head. Most guessed that it was a Droid.
And sure enough, there was a Droid inside that box. It’s just not the Droid that we – or you, most likely – were looking for.
Update: We’ve reuploaded the video to fix the corrupted bit at the end, so it now includes ~13 seconds of never before seen, Director’s Cut footage. Fine, it’s not that exciting.
This just mysteriously appeared on our doorstep. The return address on the label leads to Verizon’s PR company, Weber Shandwick. We’re going to do a video unboxing in just a second – in the mean time, any guesses as to whats inside?
Update: The unboxing is live. It is indeed.. a Droid. Of sorts. Sorry for the delays – YouTube just sat there spinning the “Processing!” message for over 25 minutes. Thanks for that, Youtube.
![Screen shot 2009-10-21 at [ October 21 ] 11.29.27 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-21-at-October-21-11.29.27-AM-300x169.png)
Gameloft just sent over this teaser trailer for an upcoming title, “Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain”. Sure, Chuck’s a bit late to the iPhone game if he’s looking to milk this meme for all it’s worth – but we had to share the video with you, or he’d burst through our office wall and roundhouse kick us in the face. We didn’t want that to happen.
We should all probably wait until this is the least bit official before we start drooling too much, but these pricing sheets leaked to TmoNews look pretty legit. It looks like T-Mobile’s Project Dark, which has been all the rage around the rumor mill lately, is finally coming to a head.
RIM is good at plenty of stuff: As any sore-thumbed business-type could tell you, they’ve got the whole email thing down. They can pump out software updates for a bunch of handsets at an outright impressive pace. With the BlackBerry Storm2, they’ve shown people that they can build the touchscreen device everyone thought they were building the first time around. Even with all these talents, one thing still drags them down, tarnishing an otherwise exceptional brand: their browser.
Sure, the BlackBerry browser has gotten marginally better over time – but compared to the competition, it falls short in nearly every department. Rumors were abound a few months back that BlackBerry was planning to completely overhaul their browser, scrapping the entire thing in favor of a browser built around WebKit, the same engine used for the iPhone and Android browsers. A few weeks later, RIM snatched up Torch Mobile, developers behind the semi-popular (and WebKit based!) browser for Windows Mobile, Iris.
Things were pretty much set in stone when Iris developer’s disclosed that they’d be making good use of their “WebKit-based mobile browser expertise” while at RIM – but if that wasn’t enough for you, how about word straight out of RIM’s mouth?
Further proving that they can blast out feature phones at a rate faster than any other manufacturer in the world, Samsung has just launched not one, but two new pieces for U.S. Cellular.
