China Unicom’s chairman believes that the iPhone will be the most popular phone in China, beating out Nokia and RIM for the crown of Bounteous Emperor of the Eastern Phone World.

Interestingly, the iPhone will cost over $1,000 in China and there expectations that gray market sales won’t effect Unicom’s bottom line. There are currently 1 million iPhones sold yearly in China on the gray market.

Considering the dreck Chinese manufacturers are pushing out in the first place, it’s probably not too hard to corner the market in good phones.

via Bloomberg

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OK, the last part was a joke but come on. If you jailbreak your phone, change your password. Real simple. You can follow these directions or simply SSH into your iPhone and type “passwd” and enter a new password. Easy peasy.

via Intego

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So AT&T has a problem: even after early and vociferous defections by bloggers, they’ve been getting creamed for sub-par service everywhere, especially left and right coast cities that rhyme with Blue Pork and Fan Fanfisco.

Verizon is stepping into that breech by releasing these clever commercials touting its network over AT&Ts. But, as Mr. Fireball notes, Verizon is talking about the invisible stuff here and ignoring its top-rated Droid. It seems that they’ve been on the “coverage” kick for so long that they can’t get off it it, resulting in comparisons that, at least for early adopters, are usually ignored.

Verizon has a great phone right now. They should play to that strength. Here are two more clever commercials for your viewing pleasure.

via AOL

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via SlashGear

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Well, Sprint is officially outlawing it on their Android phones and, as we know, once it’s outlawed, only outlaws will tether. Not quite sure how they’ll control it but clearly they’ll be watching throughput to confirm you’re not stealing bits.

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Long-suffering handset maker Sony Ericsson is all about the UX, people, and they’ve got the screens to prove it. The new system does basically what everyone else is doing and it brings all of your friend’s content into something called TimeScape (there’s another one for media called Media Scape.)

Their new UX UI looks pretty amazing – you basically drag cards all over the screen with your finger, which is quite interesting and it’s made all the better by having some lady and two dudes show you how everything works.

My worry? That the Experia X10, which look really pretty right now, will actually turn out to run like garbage. I’ve seen too many innovative interfaces in my day to trust these sexy videos to show me the truth.

I also wonder what program they use to make simulate the hand and fingers? Also, I love Italian tech blogs. They make crappy handsets so romantic and exciting! It’s like riding a Vespa!

via Android.HDBlog.IT

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Click the thumbnail to see it slightly bigger.

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All kidding aside, the reason there is such a dearth of great games has to do with some programming choices in Android itself and it’s a problem that can – and should – be fixed before the Droid comes to market this November.

The real culprit behind the lack of Android apps isn’t lack of developer adoption or a difficult SDK – it’s the ludicrous 256MB limit on app storage for most current Android phones and Android 2.0 itself. The OS also does not support the installation of apps on removable storage like SD cards, further ruining chances for more effusive and expansive titles. Considering most apps are in the 10MB range we’re talking a max of 25 apps on a good day and about 5 on a bad one.

This limitation has existed since Android 1.0 and continues in Android 2.0. As this enlightening post notes, Myst for the iPhone runs 727MB, a little under a gigabyte. That’s right: Droid doesn’t even have enough space to allow you to render the well let alone let you into the rocket.

The Droid has 512MB of memory with half of that available to apps. More internal storage is definitely in order if Android can’t support external storage – an understandable move due to potential data corruption during an unexpected card removal – it definitely needs a bit more space under the hood in future models.

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It will cost just $99.99 with a two-year service agreement, after a $50 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate and be available at Sprint stores, online at www.sprint.com, through telesales at 1-800-SPRINT1, and at Best Buy, RadioShack and select Wal-Mart stores.

Attachable QWERTY keyboard, accelerometer for rotating screen from landscape to widescreen (internet rotation, messaging rotation, wall paper switch, FM channel switch, TV channel switch, call silent, motion gaming) Java 2.0, TV, eBuddy + Opera mini browser preinstalled, wifi, FM radio with recording,

Java! TV! Radio! All this and more could be yours if you send in your money today. It has a card slot for expansion and includes 70MB of onboard memory.

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Nokia blamed the loss on component shortages, a valid concern. Apple has been buying up all the flash it can eat and companies like LG and Samsung are blowing out feature phones to directly compete with Nokia’s lower-end models faster than anyone thought possible.

Here’s what could be happening. Bear with me. First, we posit that Nokia is selling very little in America and much more in Europe and developing countries. Mobile is a young person’s game in Europe and Nokia is a young person’s phone. With youth unemployment at 29% in some countries (BusinessWeek did a piece on this. I embedded a video below.) you’re dealing with a consumer who is severely constrained in terms of disposable income. Nokia phones last for years and you can get by with one Nokia without upgrading, provided you’re only texting and making calls. So Nokia’s own quality bit them in the hindquarters this time.
Nokia is not a line for early adopters. Their phones, while exciting on some fronts, are vanilla on the aggregate. They still have the number one spot in terms of sales, but I worry that Nokia won’t be able to turn around if it dips below one of the Korean manufacturers.

I’m obviously being very bearish here but Nokia’s line-up has been solid for years and these days “solid” isn’t good enough with a more plugged-in audience. I love Nokia’s products and culture and so, like a mother, I worry.

Thoughts? Europeans want to chime in?

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Motorola has released the phone it should have released a few years ago to compete with phones like the Helio Ocean and feature phones from LG and Samsung. Android brings this phone into the 21st century and the QWERTY keyboard and BLUR UI tweaks will please those looking for a keyboard Android phone with social networking features.

The Long Version
This last half-decade has been hard on Motorola. It launched the RAZR in 2004 and essentially riffed on that ground-breaking clamshell for another four years. Now it’s 2009 and it’s time to move in a different direction. Can this creaky ship of a company take up the line, hoist the mizzen, and tack to starboard? Is the Motorola CLIQ the answer to their deepest, most secret prayers, prayed in anguish under a stifling cover of imminent collapse? How many more metaphors can I use here before I sound like I’m writing for a business magazine?

First, I finger wag. Motorola, you have been very bad. You squandered your massive lead (110 million RAZRs sold by 2005) on a strategy that included, but was not limited to, trying to copy the magic of the RAZR while the rest of the industry was going the way of the smartphone. Then you tried to build out some Windows Mobile phones that no one wanted and, in the end, lost out to just about every rival you’ve ever had. This is bad.

So here’s your hail Mary pass, your Radio Free Europe, your return to four-letter naming conventions. I present the Motorola CLIQ.


What’s Inside

This phone will be sold on T-Mobile and includes a quad-band GSM radio and runs Android. It has a slide out QWERTY keyboard with direction buttons and a 5-megapixel camera that can record video. It includes GPS for turn-by-turn navigation and supports Bluetooth as well as MP3/AAC/WAV/H.264/MPEG playback.

It has built-in WiFi (802.11b/g) and a removable 2GB MicroSD card is included in the box. It is charged and sync via a micro-USB cable.

Three buttons under the screen access the menu, access the home screen, and go back, respectively. A button on the upper right turns the phone off and locks it and a button on the lower right activates the camera. There are volume control buttons on the left side along with a hard mute switch. A full-sized headphone port hangs out on top.

The device is clad in shiny metallic plastic and has a plastic backing that is textured to look like carbon fiber. A white LED pulses on the phone’s face as a grim reminder of your own mortality.

The CLIQ will sell for $199 with two year contract. It will be available to current T-Mobile customers on October 19 and for new customers on November 2.

Usability

The CLIQ is very heavy, much heavier than you expect. It weighs almost six ounces, which isn’t much, but it seems dense. They keyboard is comfortable and the touchscreen is responsive and on par with the HTC MyTouch.

I had horrible luck getting a 3G signal out in Brooklyn which may have been a by-product of my location and the CLIQ’s firmware. The MyTouch, for example, gets T-Mobile 3G in Brooklyn without trouble.

Motorola rates this phone at 6 hours talk time and 13 days of standby. These numbers would be correct if it weren’t for the myriad social networking features built-in which, like it or not, eat up the battery. The phone I used was at the half-way mark at 2pm after being unplugged at 9am. I’d say the daily usage is under 18 hours and this thing definitely needs an overnight charge.

The phone does not seem to have a position sensor it only flips the screen when the keyboard is out.
The camera is acceptable as is the camcorder feature. The phone includes Shazam music discovery software, an RSS newsreader, and Telenav GPS Navigator. All of these work fine under Android. In fact, this is a stock Android phone with a little something extra.

Blur

So what is Blur? Blur, like HTC’s Sense UI, is Motorola’s overlay on top of – or, more correctly, around Android. I integrates Facebook, Twitter, Picassa, MySpace, and Photobucket content along with your POP/IMAP email and Gmail contacts list into one cohesive unit. The default home screen has a status update widget along with a “Universal Message” box that shows all of your new emails. A quick tap will open up a larger view of both. A Facebook/Twitter widget pops up status updates. News and Entertainment widgets offer just what you’d imagine they offer.

Unlike HTC’s Sense, this is not an over-arching or overly ambitious skinning of Android. You are limited to one type of clock, for example, out of the box, and the skinning stops at the clever widgets and a few color and app choices.

Blur is clever. When you start up the phone it asks for all of your login particulars. Everyone, be they in Twitter or Facebook or Gmail, shows up as a contact. Most of these contacts will automatically connect with each other, ensuring you don’t have too many duplicates. However, seeing a huge list of odd Twitter names is a bit disconcerting.

What is Blur? It is the first use of Android in a what would normally be a feature phone. This is a huge step forward for the operating system and a good move by Motorola. The phone is aimed as “social” folks AKA teens. There is nothing in this phone to suggest it is a smartphone and Blur cements that position quite nicely. In the same way the Hero was aimed at trendy socialites, this, too, takes everything from everywhere and puts it into one package. It is not, however, a phone for the enterprise. The CLIQ is, you know, for kids.

Bottom Line
I’ve had a few days to play with the CLIQ and came away refreshed and hopeful. This phone is better than the G1 on all fronts but there is still a ways to go for it to beat out some of HTC’s upcoming Android offerings. Motorola didn’t hit it out of the ballpark on this one, but they’re still in the game.

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I can’t stand it, i know you planned it
Ima set it straight, this Watergate
I can’t stop textin’ when i’m in there
’cause your crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear
So, while you sit back and wonder why
I’m missing my pics when I slide my ‘Kick
Oh my god, it’s a mirage
I’m tellin’ y’all it’s sabotage

So,so,so, so listen up ’cause you can’t say nothin’
You shut me down with a push of your button
But AppleInsider knows why your data’s gone
I’ll tell you now I keep it on and on:

…someone with access to the servers at the datacenter must have inserted a time bomb to wipe out not just all of the data, but also all of the backup tapes, and finally, I suspect, reformatting the server hard drives so that the service itself could not be restarted with a simple reboot (and to erase any traces of the time bomb itself)… If this was an ordinary sort of failure, the service would have come back within a day, so once again, all signs point to sabotage.

’cause what you see you might not get
And we can bet, so don’t you get backed-up yet
Scheming on a thing that’s a mirage
I’m tryin’ to tell you now it’s sabotage

In all honesty, I have a problem with this theory. A three-pronged attack on servers like this is pretty difficult, especially from afar. While it’s obvious that a laid-off employee could have planted this during Danger’s move to Microsoft, Danger’s IT people must be pretty stupid to fall for something of this magnitude, y’all.

via Giz

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Not only does the term “Windows Phone” just sound wrong, now they’re trying to equate all your Windows apps with puffy little men who love you but don’t want you to leave.

The story is simple: the icons are your Windows apps. They miss you. You can take ether with you on your Windows Phone. Sadly, they don’t show how you have to cripple them as they leave the house, reducing them to a shell of their former selves. Perhaps a scene of hobbling, like in Misery?

via Eng

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The phone includes a slide-to-unlock feature along with analog TV and FM radio playback and “Java Application.”

The Ophone OS is essentially China’s answer to Android with a number of standard features built-in over the Android kernel. It’s essentially free and is pretty close to what you’d expect out of a smartphone clone. No pricing or availability.

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First, a bit of explanation of terms. In this case, a smartphone is a phone with an operating system that is able to run more than the built-in application deck. A feature phone is a phone with a pre-set deck that perhaps can allow downloads but is not considered a smartphone. The Blackberry is a smartphone while the Moto RAZR is a feature phone.

Based on a set of criteria, Apple scored highest over LG and Blackberry in the business category and highest in the consumer smartphone category, over second-place RIM.

LG ranked highest in satisfaction in the feature phone market.

Consumer smartphone users ranked Wi-Fi, touchscreen, and GPS as the most important features in a smartphone and 40 percent of the 1,148 respondents claimed to have replaced their landlines with cell phones. About half download entertainment software while 46 percent have downloaded travel apps like weather and maps.

You can read more about the study here.

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We’ve known about this old girl for a few weeks now but it’s finally been announced on T-Mo. No pricing or availability date.

Following the success of its predecessor, the Samsung Behold®, the Behold II will be available exclusively from T-Mobile and is currently scheduled to launch before the start of the holidays. The sleek touch-screen phone is the first from T-Mobile USA to feature a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, which provides crisper colors and wider viewing angles. In addition, the Behold II is equipped with Samsung’s innovative TouchWiz user interface, allowing easy customization with widgets located in a slide out tray on the left side of the home screen and providing one-touch access to a customer’s favorite and most commonly used features and applications. The Behold II offers three different home screens to drag and drop widgets onto the screen and organize the different workspaces with favorite widgets and application shortcuts. Samsung’s intuitive cube menu also provides quick access to six top multimedia features, including music, photos, videos, the Web, YouTube™ and Amazon MP3 for music downloads.

SAMSUNG MOBILE AND T-MOBILE USA INTRODUCE SAMSUNG BEHOLD® II

Samsung’s First Joint Android™-Powered Mobile Phone from Samsung and T-Mobile Offers Rich Internet, Multimedia Experience

DALLAS, and BELLEVUE, WASH. — Oct. 5, 2009 — Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile)1, the No. 1 phone provider in the U.S. 2, and T-Mobile USA, Inc. today announced the upcoming availability of the Samsung Behold® II powered by Android. The Behold II is a full touch-screen phone integrating the open and innovative Android platform from Open Handset Alliance™ with Samsung’s next generation TouchWiz™ user interface and T-Mobile’s high-speed 3G network for a rich mobile experience.

Following the success of its predecessor, the Samsung Behold®, the Behold II will be available exclusively from T-Mobile and is currently scheduled to launch before the start of the holidays. The sleek touch-screen phone is the first from T-Mobile USA to feature a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, which provides crisper colors and wider viewing angles. In addition, the Behold II is equipped with Samsung’s innovative TouchWiz user interface, allowing easy customization with widgets located in a slide out tray on the left side of the home screen and providing one-touch access to a customer’s favorite and most commonly used features and applications. The Behold II offers three different home screens to drag and drop widgets onto the screen and organize the different workspaces with favorite widgets and application shortcuts. Samsung’s intuitive cube menu also provides quick access to six top multimedia features, including music, photos, videos, the Web, YouTube™ and Amazon MP3 for music downloads.

“We’re excited to announce Samsung’s first Android-powered device with T-Mobile in the U.S.,” said Omar Khan, senior vice president of strategy and product management for Samsung Mobile. “The Behold II follows the success of the Behold that launched last year taking the device and user experience to the next level with the Android platform, a large 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, next generation TouchWiz user interface and customization capabilities and premium features.”

“T-Mobile continues to expand our line-up of Android-powered phones in time for the holiday season with the addition of the Samsung Behold II,” said Travis Warren, director, product marketing, T-Mobile USA. “The premium screen and quality camera coupled with Samsung’s innovative cube menu makes the Behold II a multimedia powerhouse that’s made even stronger by T-Mobile’s high-speed 3G network.”

The Behold II will keep customers organized and entertained with access to built-in Google™ mobile services, including Google Search™, Google Maps™, Gmail™, YouTube and Google Talk™ as well as thousands of applications and games available for download from Android Market™. The Wi-Fi-enabled Behold II also supports personal email and corporate email with Exchange ActiveSync, as well as instant messaging, and text, picture and video messaging. Additional features include a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash, five shooting modes and video capabilities, visual voicemail which allows customers to listen to voicemails in order of preference, MP3 player, up to 16GB of external memory, assisted GPS and Bluetooth® 2.1.

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Google, however, takes issue with him releasing closed-source Google apps like Gmail, Maps, and YouTube and has sent him a cease and desist. They’re not particularly mad about the ROMs, mind you, just the apps inside them.

He IMed the folks at AndroidAndMe, telling them:

[20:03] google just cease and desisted me
[20:15] cyanogenmod is probably going to be dead
[20:16] i’m opening a dialogue with them
[20:20] no they are talking specifically about the closed-source google apps
[20:20] and how i am not licensed to distribute them

Presumably he can just take out the closed source apps and he’ll be fine. The only problem will be the users who may or may not have the wherewithal to find them online later.

via Eng

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I would totally share my WWAN connection – for a price. Imagine the lucrative trade you could have in an airport.

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