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.
Good news, everyone! RIM has used the keynote of their BlackBerry Developer Conference to drop the good word on a fairly important topic: Carrier billing is coming to the BlackBerry App World in 2010.
Carrier billing is quite certainly one of the most important — yet mostly unmentioned — aspect of any App Store’s success.
As the number of Android-powered handsets on the market continues to expand, so do the technical capabilities of the applications that run on the platform. The Droid, for example, is the first handset to introduce video recording at a resolution 720×480 (more than double that of the 320×240 recording found on most other handsets), and app makers are already swooping in to take advantage of it.
The first off the bat is the mobile video broadcasting service Qik, who will later tonight be announcing beta support for the increased resolution.
While the tech-loving world continues to debate the merits of the Droid following its launch on Friday, it’s pretty safe to say that the Android platform has seen a pretty hefty influx of users as of late. In the past two weeks alone, we’ve seen the aforementioned Droid, it’s cheaper, younger sibling, the Droid Eris, and the Sprint Moment all hit the shelves; if any of them sold even reasonably well, there’s a lot of new folk cracking open the Android Market for the first time right now.
Whether you’re an iPhone convert, an ex-Nokian, or just a stranger to smartphones as a whole, the Android Market can be a pretty daunting place. While Android might not have quite as many apps as the leading competition, it still has a bit over 10,000 – and that’s a hell of a lot for any newcomer to weed through.
For the sake of these nascent newbies, we’ve thrown together a list of a handful of apps we think are worth checking out right off the bat. Got a favorite of your own? Throw it into the comments below.
![Screen shot 2009-11-09 at [ November 9 ] 11.40.51 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-09-at-November-9-11.40.51-AM.png)
You’re stuck in quite the conundrum. You want the chic elegance of the iPhone – but you want unbridled flexibility that comes with the Android platform. Whatever are you supposed to do?
![Screen shot 2009-11-09 at [ November 9 ] 10.56.13 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-09-at-November-9-10.56.13-AM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-09 at [ November 9 ] 10.56.13 AM")
It took them a while to get past all the “iDon’t” nonsense, then they followed up with that mysterious space-phone campaign, but it looks like Verizon’s finally using their commercials to actually tell people what the Droid is.
Three new ad spots hit the interwebs today. The first shows off Google Navigation. The second walks you through the browsing experience. The third says that the Droid can crush rocks and punch holes through walls or something – I don’t know, that one got kind of weird. Check out the videos after the jump.
♪It’s close to midnight and something cheesy’s lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a phone that almost makes you barf♪
Man. Just last weekend, I was looking at my boring ol’ phone and thinking to myself: if only this were covered in faux-gold and diamonds and molded to look vaguely like Michael Jackson’s torso!
Some of the main features, according to the only available pictures, are “High-definition Camera”, “Ebook”, and “Calling leave word”. SOLD.
[Shanzhai Via Engadget Mobile]
Early this morning, 200 Android developers woke up to one hell of an e-mail: they’d made it into the final round of the second Android Developer Challenge, and were thus one giant step closer to as much as $250,000.
Android Developer Challenge 2 officially began way back in May, though the actual voting didn’t begin until some time in September. The votes were split amongst Android users and Googlers (with the latter getting a 55% say), with all voting taking place in a special, custom-made application. To be eligible, applications had to be completely fresh (read: no updates allowed) to the Android Market as of August 1st, couldn’t have been a part of the first Challenge, and must run on Android v1.5.
My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you.
There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2.
Another week, another truckload of Samsung devices dumped onto the shelves. This week’s Samsung shipment brings two new TouchWiz-based touchscreen handsets: the Mythic, and the Flight.
Before we dive into the specs, we gotta give Samsung some grief for the names. Not because they’re bad – in fact, I really, really like both of these names. So much that I wonder why the hell Samsung is giving them to two random TouchWiz handsets. I mean, come on: LG has to resort to calling one of their best selling phones “Cookie“, and you throw away Mythic? For shame!
Anyway, on to the handsets:
![Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 7.04.42 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-04-at-November-4-7.04.42-PM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 7.04.42 PM")
Needless to say, AT&T’s none too happy about Verizon’s “Theres a Map for That” campaign. AT&T first complained about the ads back in October, saying they were misleading. Verizon responded by adding a few extra words and an itsy bitsy disclaimer – but that wasn’t enough for AT&T. Early this morning, AT&T filed a false advertising suit against Big Red, presumably in an effort to get the ads off the air as soon as possible.
This afternoon, AT&T sent out an internal memo regarding the lawsuit, and we’ve obtained a copy.
![Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 3.21.54 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-04-at-November-4-3.21.54-PM-152x300.png "Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 3.21.54 PM")
Look – we’re certainly not the world’s biggest fans of Windows Mobile 6.5, but we still absolutely feel that anyone who has the opportunity to upgrade from 6.1 to 6.5 should certainly do so. If you’ve got a Samsung Jack, we’ve got good news: that “anyone” group now includes you.
Samsung just hit us up to let us know that the Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade package has gone live here. It doesn’t seem like the simplest upgrade process ever — you’ll definitely want to back up your stuff before you dive in — but in return you’ll get Internet Explorer 6, the Windows Mobile Marketplace, and all of the other goodies that Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard brings along.
So you’ve lurked the blogs, watched the unboxing, and read the coverage, and you just know: you want your Droid. You already know that most Verizon Stores are opening the doors a bit early at 7 AM to get your your fix – but what if you want it even earlier?
We just got word that a very, very limited number of Verizon stores will start peddling the Droid as soon as the clock ticks over to November 6th, from midnight to 2 a.m. The emphasis here is definitely on “limited”.
While other carriers might finally be dipping their toes in the Android water this month, T-Mobile has been in this game for a long time. They got their first Android phone (the G1) out last October, and managed to launch two more (the myTouch and the CLIQ) within the year. It makes sense, then, that they’re the first to pipe up with some usage details.
T-Mobile today shared a few interesting Android statistics, and announced a number of ways they’d be increasing their support for the Android Market.
![Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 2.11.36 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-04-at-November-4-2.11.36-AM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 2.11.36 AM")
Seeing as HTC’s CEO Peter Chou sorta slipped up and mentioned this back in October, it’s not exactly, you know, news news – but just in case you were a little bit shaky on the dates, HTC has gone ahead and confirmed that the 1 Ghz, WinMo 6.5-powered HTC HD2 will be coming to the United States “with a major US carrier in early 2010. ”
Note that they specifically say a US carrier – implying that it’ll be just one, at least right off the bat. The rumor mill has endlessly pinned this one as being destined for T-Mobile, so it’s at least somewhat safe to assume that’s where its heading.
Either way, we’ll be getting it a bit later than our overseas brethren; in the same press release, HTC disclosed that HD2 shipments in Europe and Taiwan are heading out right this second, and the rest of Asia should see it hit the shelves over the next few weeks.
Ack! Talk about bad timing. T-Mobile is just barely off the grill for their guilt-by-association connection with the Great Danger/Sidekick outage of 2009, and now they’re right back in the network-outage spotlight.
This time around, it appears that it’s their entire network – or at least, a big ol’ chunk of it – that has gone down. Voice and data are both coming up empty, Twitter is on fire with complaints, and T-Mobile has confirmed that they’re aware of the issues and have got engineers cracking away as we speak.
Tmo’s Statement on the matter:
All – We’re aware of the current service disruption. Our rapid response teams have been mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible. We will provide further updates as more information is available.
Rapid response team, eh? I’m imagining a band of men wearing pink berets, repelling onto cell towers out of a helicopter piloted by Catherine Zeta Jones.
When the iPhone OS 3.1 update rolled through town, it brought with it a handful of new features – but it also killed off one, not-so-official feature: unauthorized data tethering on AT&T.
Early this morning, the endlessly ingenious iPhone hacking community released Blacksn0w, a carrier unlock for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Even if you have no need to plug in a different SIM card than what was originally intended, however, Blacksn0w still has its perks. Namely, it brings the aforementioned unauthorized data tethering right on back.
We’ve just walked through the process, and it went off without a hitch. If you’re interested in doing the same but don’t want to do it alone, we’ve thrown together a handy step-by-step guide, just for you.
Good news, everyone! As you may have heard by now, the iPhone 3GS and 3G are now fully carrier-unlockable thanks to blacksn0w – but that’s not all!
In addition to making your iPhone carriers SIM card slot play friendly with just about any SIM you can cram in there, blacksn0w also undoes some of the locks put in place by Apple/AT&T during the upgrade to 3.1. Namely, it removes the IPCC lock which prevented tethering.
I just got my iPhone up and tethering in all of a few minutes – we’ll have a tutorial up in just a bit.
Whenever you hear about bugs and exploits being discovered in the iPhone’s browser, Safari, it’s usually the doings of some masterful meddler who devoted hours to unearthing any flaws they could find — not some user casually tapping around the application. Apple’s pretty good at keeping things locked down, and the iPhone’s got enough users that most of the nasty user-facing bugs have been flushed out. Well, except for this new one.
It’s not an incredibly common bug, and it doesn’t seem likely that it would hit most users – but for the iPhone users this newly discovered bug does affect, it could mean huge operator fees.
Gameloft, one of the world’s largest mobile gaming development houses, has just released their numbers for the third quarter of 2009.
In the first three quarters of 2009, Gameloft has already slung $132.3 million in mobile applications. This is up roughly 18% percent from the same time period last year, during which they brought in roughly $112.2 million.
We BLOOP dig BeeJive on the iPhone. What we BLOOP don’t dig is getting a pop-up push BLOOP notification every 3 seconds just because some of our friends like to type in fragments rather BLOOP than sentences.
Fortunately, BeeJive has recently added a new setting which lets you tweak the behavior of push notifications to be far, far less annoying. The wording they chose to tuck it behind doesn’t make things completely obvious, but it makes a world of difference.
Way back in March, Apple announced that the latest and greatest build of the iPhone OS would open up a whole new world to third parties: richly featured accessories, complete with tie-in software. No longer would accessory makers be limited to headphones, cases, and FM transmitters with hardware controls – now they could make glucose meters, guitar amp controllers, and FM transmitters with onscreen controls! The possibilities were endless.
8 months later, what is there to show for it? There’s a $120 car cradle that boosts the GPS accuracy of the iPhone, some fancy running shoes, and.. er.. well, that’s about it. Maybe we’re just expecting too much; maybe the design/review/approval process is even more of a chore for the hardware guys than it is for app store developers. At this rate, though, we’ll be seeing a fourth generation iPhone before we see any more accessories.
Partly for the sake of inspiring would be hardware-makers and partly because we just like to think about this sort of stuff, we’ve come up with a list of 5 (plus) iPhone accessories we’re not-so-patiently waiting for. Feel free to add your own in the comments.
![Screen shot 2009-11-02 at [ November 2 ] 11.51.06 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-02-at-November-2-11.51.06-AM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-02 at [ November 2 ] 11.51.06 AM")
You know what? We’ll be honest. The fact that the T-Mobile Motorola CLIQ is now available to anyone who wants one (rather than only existing T-mo customers, as its been for a week or two now) is only a small part of the reason we wrote this post.
We primarily wrote this because we wanted to be able to use the “298 minutes away from cake” graphic one more time. It’s just too damn intriguing. Are they saying its just short of 5 hours until their birthday, or are they en route to their unfortunately named friend, Cake McCool? It truly is one of life’s great mysteries.
![Screen shot 2009-11-02 at [ November 2 ] 10.19.15 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-02-at-November-2-10.19.15-AM-200x300.png "Screen shot 2009-11-02 at [ November 2 ] 10.19.15 AM")
It’s probably a bit less apparent on this side of the fence than it is over at CrunchGear, but we loves us some Woot around these parts. Where else can you buy a “Bag of Crap” that you’d actually be excited to receive?
Thing is, it gets a bit tough to keep up with Woot when you’ve got other, less entertaining tasks to do. Gotta drop the kids off at karate? Meh. Visit Grandma? What if Woot offers up a titanium bread box? You’ve been waiting for a titanium bread box for like 3 months.
Now you can do all that boring stuff and keep an eye out for that bread box.
![Screen shot 2009-11-02 at [ November 2 ] 10.10.07 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-02-at-November-2-10.10.07-AM-630x151.png "Screen shot 2009-11-02 at [ November 2 ] 10.10.07 AM")
We don’t get a chance to do this very often, but I wanted to start this lovely Monday morning off with something I’ve wanted to say for a while: Thanks for reading us, everyone.
MobileCrunch launched in September of 2006. Around mid-2008, we changed things up a bit – and we’ve seen monumental growth ever since. MobileCrunch has gone nowhere but up across the board. Pageviews and unique visitor counts have sky-rocketed, our dedicated readership has exploded, and we’re getting the opportunity to break more stories each and every month. October was our best month ever, on every metric we can gauge.
It’s all thanks to you, dear readers. You stop by for your daily dose of mobile news, maybe share a story or two with friends on Twitter – and MobileCrunch flourishes into a better site as a result. For that, we can’t thank you enough. We’ll keep the coverage coming, and we’ll try to squeeze in a few awesome contests this month as a thanks to you guys – but in the mean time, keep tuning in. You guys and gals are amazing.
If hype were to be believed, the Motorola DROID is the pièce de résistance of the mobile world; the conclusive creation sent down by the Great Smartphone in the sky to rid us of our woes. It would prepare your breakfast promptly each morning, tuck you in at night, and, maybe — just maybe — knock the iPhone down a notch or two.
Beginning about a week before its launch (largely due to Verizon’s incredibly intense marketing campaign) I began getting calls and tweets from friends and colleagues asking about the Droid. They always had two questions: the first would be something like “What do you think of the Droid?”, followed by “Would you recommend it over the iPhone?” Same questions, each.. and.. every.. time.
I’ve been using the Droid as my primary phone for a few days now, and I think I’m finally ready to answer them.
