Brands are increasingly prominent on the App Store and Apple tends to love featuring folks like Britney Spears and Coca-Cola on the App Store’s front page. But who’s actually succeeding and which brands have managed to maintain high download numbers?
PositionApp, the app that lets you track how iPhone apps are doing on the App Store rankings, might have the answer. They track and record the top 300 apps across all demographics and have provided us with details on the top 15 apps in the US App Store. Hit the jump for the list.
Read More
A few days ago we wrote about Mel Sampat, a member of the Windows Phone 7 development team who had chosen to leave the team to pursue his own endeavors, part of which included making third-party apps for the very platform he helped make. You might assume that his history with the platform would make developing things for it a bit easier — and, well, you’d probably be right.
Just two days after the general availability of the Windows Phone 7 development tools, Sampat’s company Mist Labs has just announced their first Windows Phone 7 application: Twikini. Besides being the company’s first app, it also gets to claim to be the first Update: second (see below) Twitter client announced for the platform.
Read More
If you’re anything like me, you consistently forget where and when you parked your car. I’ve called tow companies more than once to see if they took my car, when in fact I was simply one street off in my memory. I could probably use this little app we just got in our tip box, called 3DCoche or Car Finder AR, depending on whether you speak Spanish or not. It’s simple enough: you save your car’s position when you park, and it also notes the time — then you can pull up the camera view and see your car’s location superimposed on the image.
I’m not sure how it handles elevation, and of course it won’t work in underground car parks, but if like me you’ve gotten tickets from having no presence of mind, it might be a good investment.
We just got the good word from the folks at Sprint themselves: the Google Nexus One will be landing on Sprint. And with that, the Nexus One will be available for all four major US carriers (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile).
Sprint’s being sort of tight-lipped here; they apparently haven’t quite figured out how to price it yet, so pricing details and availability haven’t been disclosed. While we might hear more solid details about this at CTIA next week, don’t expect it to be Sprint’s main focus; chances are, a different Android-powered handset already holds that spot.
There isn’t much to say about the HTC Supersonic that hasn’t been said already. It’s big (in a 4.3-inch-display sort of way). It’s beautiful. It’s Android-powered, and runs on Sprint’s 4G WiMax network. It’s just not.. you know, official in any way.
According to the Wall Street Journal, that’s about to change. Read More
If I had to pin a color on the HTC Desire we saw back at MWC, I’d have called it silver. Dark, sort-of-brownish silver, but silver none the less.
But then this comes out, and shows us what a HTC Desire looks like when it’s really, really Silver.
It’s been a crazy ride on the rumor rollercoaster for the Android-powered Motorola Cliq XT. What started out as a mysterious spotting finally became official at Mobile World Congress in February. Then came a series of leaks, each half right: one got the date right, while the other nailed the price.
They’re in our homes, and they’re in our schools. There they sit, silently, eating our power. Even if you unplug your phone, they keep devouring power. What’s next!? Will cell phone chargers some day EAT YOUR CHILDREN? More at 11.
In a move to save you some gadget juice and boost their “green”-factor, AT&T has just announced what they call the first “automatic zero draw charger”, the ZERO.
Read More
When it rains, its pours. We just found out yesterday that Android 2.1 hitting the Moto Droid sometime in March was a pretty sure thing, and now we’ve got an exact date.
We knew about the pricing, but until today, we weren’t sure exactly which day the HD2 was going to hit T-Mobile. So long, ignorance! March 24th it is!
There’s more stuff going down at an HD2 event as I write this, if I’m not mistaken, and we’ll have the whole business for you shortly.
There’s a lot of white space here, so I’m going to editorialize. I know that HD2 looks sexy, but is anyone really going to buy into this OS now? We’ve got WinPho7 just….. well, lots of months away, but still.
Oh, by the way, that Samsung we saw yesterday? So not real! They just rigged it up for the demo. Why? Why the hell would you do that?
Le sigh.
We actually already knew there was no copy/paste functionality in WP7S devices, but the announcement we were hoping for at MIX wasn’t “no copy/paste for real” but rather “here’s how we’ve obsoleted copy/paste.” Maybe they’ll add it later, but… really, now. Nothing at all? You guys are killing the dream.
Bluetooth headsets are great for keeping your eyes on the road while you’re driving — until you get a text message. “I wonder who that’s from? I’ll just take a peek!” you think, reaching for your phone… and BAM! Your car’s front end is now playing twister with another car’s rear end.
Bluetooth headset manufacturer BlueAnt is looking to cut down on the number of surprise trunk attacks with the introduction of their first Android App, which they’ll be announcing next week at CTIA.
Read More
Can you blame ‘em? If you bought into a two-year contract a little more than two years ago, possibly because of shortcomings in the first iPhone (a perfectly reasonable decision), you would have been watching with jealous eye the introduction of the 3G, the 3GS, and the launch and growth of the App Store. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to change horses. BlackBerry makes some excellent handsets and has a unique value proposition, but if I’m honest, I think they’ve progressed even less in the last couple years than the iPhone has. That’s hard, people! And really, even if you love BlackBerry, if you want a versatile touchscreen phone, are you really going to go with a Storm?
Read More
Are you ready for your Windows Mobile 6.5 update, Sprint HTC Touch Pro2 owners? You should be — given that every other carrier threw 6.5 on the Pro2 months ago, you’re probably champin’ at the bit by now.
We knew it was coming this month — we just didn’t know when. Thanks to your friendly neighborhood Sprint store spy, we’ve now got an exact date.
If we were to take everything the rumormill said as gospel, we’d tell you that the Motorola Cliq XT launched in all of its Android glory on March 10th. Given that it’s now nearly a week later and the Cliq XT has yet to hit the shelves, we’d say that the rumormill is a dirty, dirty liar. Or, you know, something changed at the last minute.
Either way, now there’s a new, improved rumor to bank on! This rumor is stronger. This rumor is faster. Oh, and yeah, this rumor is most likely correct and includes updated pricing information.
Come, friends! Circle ’round and let me tell you a tale of the finest fake in all the lands. Is your standard, completely not-shady iPhone too thick and legitimate for you? 12.3mm thick? That’s like a loaf of bread! What you need, friend, is the iPhone Air. Not only have they managed to completely rip off everything from the body design to the user interface (presumably poorly), but they’ve also stuffed it all into a package just 8.5mm thick!
A new challenger has appeared! The Nexus One may not have sold all that well, but it’s still the beastiest Android handset available on US carriers. Speaking of US carriers, add one more to the Nexus One’s supported list.
Since day 1, the T-Mobile version of the Nexus One has worked with AT&T — as long as you didn’t mind that it couldn’t hop on AT&T’s 3G network. Today, with fanfare limited to a post on Google’s Nexus One blog, Google has released a version of the handset jam-packed with AT&T 3G-friendly radio.
Read More
At the most recent Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the company’s partners are now selling over 60,000 Android handsets on a daily basis. With that kind of growth rate, it’s no wonder that the size of the Android Market is quickly increasing in its slipstream.
While Google doesn’t publicly show how many applications there are in Android Market, a Google representative this morning informed me that the application store now serves approximately 30,000 free and paid apps in total.
Super sleuths at MS Mobiles (Motto: “Our small phone-shaped favicon is so outdated it’s popular again”) is accusing Microsoft of wholesale theft and battery in their new WinPho UI. KLM’s inflight whatsitcalled looks just like Microsoft’s whatsitcalled and the big blue buttons appear on KLMs entertainment whatchamacallit when you fly on their big, beautiful planes. Is it borrowing or is it theft?
Read More
Mobile app analytics company Flurry estimates that while Apple sold 1 million iPhone devices in its first 74 days of availability on the market, the Motorola Droid actually shipped more devices during that timespan. Sales of Google’s Nexus One, by comparison, kinda stunk: the company only sold an estimated 135k phones in 74 days.
Flurry reaches its conclusions through applications using its solution for analytics reporting. Because applications embedded with Flurry are said to have been downloaded to over 80% of all iPhone OS and Android devices, the company claims it can make reliable estimates about total handset sales.
