Rumor has it that T-Mobile UK and Orange UK will merge, creating a 28.4 million customer uber-carrier. The next largest carrier will be Telefonica’s O2, the former heavyweight.

The deal will be signed by November and the merged company will share networks and CRM services in the UK. This does not directly effect T-Mobile’s German parent company except in that it will lose its subsidiary in the UK.
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HTC’s naming conventions are kind of funny. I was almost hoping that after the Hero they’d call this the HTC Ninjastar or the HTC Hobo, but sadly it ended up being the Tattoo. The Tattoo runs the Sense UI, which is great++ and it has a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headset jack, and MicroSD memory slot.

The phone will be available in Europe in October and, as we all well know, may or may not come to our shores in some form or the other in the next few weeks. Full PR after the jump.

[PSGallery=3bl10ansj10y]
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Phandroid just found a mention on the Sprint Android Dev Network for the HTC Hero, everyone’s favorite Android phone. Don’t get that excited just yet. The phone won’t be officially on the network until late October and probably won’t be for sale until December.

Announcing the HTC Hero, which will be the first Android device running on the Sprint network.
By the end of September, the Sprint developer program will deploy an Android development section that will highlight some resources, value added services applicable to all android developers. FYI, you start developing now by downloading the Android 1.5 SDK
Register to attend our upcoming 2009 Open Developer Conference, where Sprint and our ecosystem partners including HTC will be talking Android:
- Technical overview sessions on Oct 26
- Android hands on coding labs the evening of Oct 26
Oh, BTW we have some BIG announcements coming by the end of the month that will be of great interest to all android developers…we promise it won’t disappoint.

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China knows how to make products. It’s not enough to make this bastard gold-plated – they added flowers! The 999 is $120 from eemobi.cn and has a “gravity sensor” (SENSOR POSITION: DOWN!), a 2.6-inch display, and 1.3-megapixel camera. It also has “7 common games.”
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Pip pip, guv’nor! How’s about a shine? Right-o. Grand pair of shoes, guv’nor. ‘Tis a pleasure to apply paste to the likes of these. S’that? Aye, I’ve got a Nokia, nice phone. Me bird got it for me. Pre-paid.

Cor, crikey! A watch phone! On Orange? ‘Tis not every day a fellow sees the likes of that. Might I ask how much something like that cost? 500 quid! Crikey! A bit of fluff that ain’t, I might say. Roit. On to the shine…
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It is time to ask the age-old question: Are our cellphones ready to replace standalone GPS units. Sure we’ve all done a little work with cellphone mapping services and we’ve all mucked about with Google Maps while driving (which is very dangerous). But are cellphones and iPhones in particular ready to knock the old GPS box off of the dashboard?

To paraphrase Molly Bloom in Ulysees, “yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me and I think you can replace your GPS device with an iPhone and software like Navigon’s Mobile Navigator for iPhone are making it much simpler yes I will Yes.”
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If you’re like me you’ve always wondered about making an iPhone game. What mad skillz do you need? What course in computer science will teach you how to vector a jet across the screen? Well, Nicholas Francis set out to solve that problem and came up with Unity, one of the most popular games development platforms for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

CrunchGear: Tell me about your company?

Nicholas Francis: Unity Technologies is the company behind the Unity gaming middleware. We have 44 employees with our development HQ in Copenhagen, Denmark. Then we have a bunch of hardcore demoscene guys in Lithuania that have forgotten more about low-level optimizations than most developers will ever know, some developers in Brighton, UK and a few hotshots that work from their respective countries. Our corporate HQ is getting moved to San Francisco – there’s so much more business going on over there, that we figured it made the most sense to have business be over there but keep development in Europe.

We launched Unity 1.0 in 2005 and slowly grew it. We never had any VC backing or anything, so we’ve grown the company organically (by about 200% per year :-). these days we have over 9000 customers – pretty much spread through word-of-mouth. Basically, we’re a tool by developers, for developers. Quite simple really, but our tech packs a real punch :)
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You and I can rail like a beplagued Job against the unfairness of the Apple store but do we ever get emails from Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president? John Gruber does.

Gruber got an email from Schiller last night after the SVP talked through the Ninjawords debacle with the Application Approval team. As you recall Ninjawords is a dictionary app that seemed to include some saucy language and was given a 17+ rating and then banned from the App Store. However, the truth is a bit more mundane.
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In another fascinating move by the App Store acceptance team (Motto: Lunch is tasty! Is that a butterfly? We like cake.) the Ninjawords pocket dictionary, a $2 app, has been given an 17+ rating after being censored by Apple. This ensures that tittering schoolboys won’t scroll through the app and discover bad words like “tits,” “micturition,” and “enough with this wanton disregard for your customer’s intelligence, Apple. Do you only hire barely literate, rule-cleaving sub-morons with no judgement skills to police your damned App Store?”
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Me: A normal guy, no issues, really into BlackBerry Curves. You: A BlackBerry Curve with a similar build quality as the 8900 with a lot of class and great UI. Let’s meet for drinks, dinner, movie? Be prepared to spend time in my pocket.

When I ran that personals ad on Craigslist I didn’t quite expect the 8520 to answer. This inexpensive phone will cost $48 at Wal-Mart (!!) and about $130 on T-Mobile proper and comes in black and light blue. I’m going to put it through its paces for a few days and report back but from what I can tell they worked pretty darn hard to get this phone under $50. First, they took off the scroll ball and replaced it with a touch sensitive pad – sort of like a track pad – and definitely took some liberties with the backlighting and fit and finish.
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The creator of iCombat wrote an analysis of his experience making and giving away a free “lite” version of his app alongside his paid, full version. The result? It makes economic sense to create a lite version early on and update it often to goose the users into downloading – and paying attention to – your app.

His global conversion rate was 9% which meant that a considerable cohort of lite users bought the full version. He discovered a number of best practices for iPhone devs and allowed us to post them here. His most important takeaway? He should have made a lite app much earlier in the game. The conversion rate once the lite app was made available was quite impressive and meant a lot of lost revenue.
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We know it was coming but so soon!

To recap it’s a WinMo 6.1 phon with WiFi, 3.6-inch touchscreen, and 3.2-megapixel camera. It will, as rumored, be available in mocha.

T-Mobile USA Debuts HTC Touch Pro2 in the U.S.
New Tilting Touchscreen Device Available to T-Mobile Customers in mid-August

Bellevue, Wash. — July 29, 2009 — T-Mobile USA, Inc., and HTC Corp. today announced the upcoming availability of the HTC Touch Pro2™, a powerful, stylish device with an intuitive touch screen and user interface that enables customers to simplify their communication and mobile Internet experience while staying connected, informed and in control of work and life. The device will be available in a mocha finish to T-Mobile customers beginning Aug. 12.

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Crackberry has some hot video of the Storm 2, RIM’s follow-up to the abysmal Storm. This new model has a less clicky screen with better keyboard and it’s slightly thinner. It also has dedicated call buttons. No word on Wi-Fi, though.

via Giz

Fortune is reporting that China Unicorn will launched the crippled iPhone without Wi-Fi in September. The crippled iPhones are being made by Foxconn in China.

The phones will be crippled to follow China’s guidelines on high-speed mobile Internet access. Should be fun.

There is a fairly standard montage in the canon of bad 80s movies. It involves the protagonist(s) working hard to build/do/invent something to beat the stuck up and dismissive antagonists. See, for example, Summer Rental, a John Candy vehicle in which Candy and crew convert a seafood restaurant that was originally a boat back into a boat in order to win a big, rich boat race against snobs. I don’t quite recall why they needed to win the race, but that’s immaterial. In the end [SPOILER ALERT] they thumb their noses, triumphantly, at the crews of the other, more richly appointed boat. It’s the tale of the underdog – an important tale to be told in that dark decade – and it is applicable here.

This brings us to the HTC Hero, HTC’s first Android phone to use the company’s new Sense UI. In one sense the Hero is “just another Android phone”; in another sense, it’s an entirely new direction for HTC and the platform.

The Hero is a great phone. It is on par – and ultimately better – than the Palm Pre and, some would say, the iPhone on many points. It also turns those lumbering Windows Mobile and Symbian into something that you will fondly remember from your youth, a set of dinosaur technologies now extinct.

Furthermore, we can easily extend the metaphor above to say that the Hero is John Candy lacquering the deck while Apple and Palm are the rich, stuck-up yacht club members laughing at the upstart. I’m here to tell you that these yacht club members should ignore this upstart at their peril.
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Let’s pour a little out for Sony Ericsson because if they’re not dead now they’re dying rapidly. The phone maker posted a loss of $300 million for Q2, it’s fourth consecutive quarter of lagging earnings.

What’s the problem? They’re not releasing anything anyone wants. The X1 was a dud and the rest of their new line hasn’t been announced yet. They’re basically sitting out the smartphone revolution.
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While this will never happen to you ever, if you own an HTC running WinMo 6 or 6.1 you could get hacked if you accept Bluetooth connections from an untrusted source. Also if you accept Bluetooth connections from an untrusted source you deserve to be hacked.

The exploit uses the Bluetooth OBEX FTP service to crack into your filesystem and traverse directories, allowing your copy of BubbleBreaker fall into the wrong hands.
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LG is making life good for people in Asia who want an app store for LG phones. The manufacturer, #3 worldwide, has added 1,400 applications and 100 free programs. The service is available in Pac-Rim countries like Singapore and Malaysia and will hit Europe by the end of this year. No mention of a US launch.
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A few months ago I was touring Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo when I espied the Nokia N79 Active Edition. Announced around CES time, this phone combo included a heart-rate monitor and sports armband along with special software to record your distance, heart-rate, and route for each workout. The software includes a full complement of statistics and maps for your pleasure and is quite fully-featured.

The phone itself uses A-GPS to measure speed and distance and the heart-rate monitor is a Bluetooth model made by Polar. It also includes a built-in pedometer and two extra backplates so you can customize your phone. I tested it a few times over the past few weeks and came away quite impressed.
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Vodafone, the world’s largest cellular operator, is thinking about buying T-Mobile UK, making the giant even bigger. The plan is under scrutiny right now as it would essentially create a massive Euro-monopoly on the cellular front.

Vodafone declined to comment. But people familiar with the situation said the company was examining the case for making an offer for T-Mobile UK, or setting up a joint venture. In February, Vodafone and Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong conglomerate, announced plans to combine their Australian mobile businesses.
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This is an interesting addition to your AT&T U-verse TV DVR (does anyone have one? I’ve never seen one). The new iPhone app allows folks to control their DVRs remotely using the Touch or the iPhone and augments the current Web Remote Access service available for U-verse.

The app allows you to pick and record content from the comfort of being in front of your iPhone.

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