mobile phone

HTC Legend takes Android 2.1 to a new level with HTC Sense

Singapore – 25 March, 2010 – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced an enhanced HTC Sense experience that will be available on its latest addition of smartphones that take Android to the next level, the HTC Legend.

“At its essence, the mobile phone is the most personal item you have in your possession. HTC Sense was created to magnify your ability to create and define your own unique mobile experience,” said Jack Tong, VP of HTC Asia. “HTC Legend takes Android to another level in both substance with HTC Sense and style with HTC Legend’s revolutionary crafted aluminum uni-body design.”

HTC SENSE
HTC Sense is a user experience focused on putting people at the centre by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. This experience revolves around three fundamental principles that were developed by observing and listening to how people live and communicate. These core tenets of Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected continue to be the key to the new HTC Sense experience.

The new HTC Sense experience continues to focus on improving your interactions with your most important people.  This begins with a new HTC application and widget called Friend Stream that seamlessly aggregates all of your social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised flow of updates. This simple aggregation makes it easier than ever to focus on what friends are doing as well as to view the images and links that they share.  In addition to Friend Stream, people can be organised into specific social circles, such as groups of friends, colleagues or any other way that makes sense.

The new HTC Sense experience also introduces broad improvements to applications including the browser, email client and others. In addition, the new version of HTC Sense includes a new newsreader application and widget, as well as a new seven-screen ‘Leap’ thumbnail view for quick and easy access to specific screens.

HTC Legend

Built around a newly enhanced HTC Sense, the HTC Legend boasts a unique design with a smooth, continuous surface, machined from a single aluminum block into a seamless compact frame.  To complement its looks, the HTC Legend includes a stunning 3.2 inch, AMOLED HVGA display.  The traditional trackball has also been replaced with an optical joystick, surrounded by a narrow button to improve usability without interrupting its unique design.

Pricing & Availability
The new HTC Legend will be available in early April at all authorized resellers at a suggested retail price of S$798*. Standard retail HTC Legend package will come with a 2GB microSD™ card.
*All prices are subject to pricing policies of individual operators.

The names of companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

By some accounts, this week hasn’t been so great for Google.

The first bit of bad news concerns sales of Google’s Nexus One phone.

On Tuesday, the market analytics firm Flurry released a report saying initial sales of Google’s Nexus One phone have been slim compared to the Droid and the iPhone. The firm compared sales of those those phones over the first 74 days they were on the market. In a blog post, Flurry says it chose that time period because that’s how long it took the original iPhone to sell 1 million handsets when it was released in 2007.

By comparison, only 135,000 Nexus One phones were sold in that phone’s first 74 days. More from Flurry’s post:

As Google and Apple continue to battle for the mobile marketplace, Google Nexus One may go down as a grand, failed experiment or one that ultimately helped Google learn something that will prove important in years to come.

Google responded to that news by playing up the Android Market, the online store where people with Android phones – like the Nexus One and Droid – buy applications, according to Engadget. 

Google issued a statement to CNN, saying:

We’re pleased with our sales volumes and with how well the Nexus One has been received by our customers. The Nexus One is one of a fast growing number of Android handsets which have been brought to market through the open Android ecosystem. Our partners are shipping more than 60,000 Android handsets each day compared with 30,000 just three months ago.

Not everyone says this news is so bad, though. Concern about the Nexus One’s slow start is “more than a little ridiculous,” writes Derek Thompson at The Atlantic:

Google is still a software company dabbling in hardware. And its mobile smart phone software is very, very good.

The other potentially troublesome story concerns Google’s search traffic.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine appears to be making slight inroads on Google, which still dominates that territory. A Nielsen report, issued Monday, found Microsoft searches in February made up 12.5 percent of the search market, compared to 10.9 percent in January. Meanwhile, Google still accounts for 65.2 percent of all U.S. searches.

The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital blog notes that the shift in the search market is “slow going”:

… Bing is clearly whittling away at both Google and Yahoo’s search market share. Of course, the flip side is that with Yahoo in decline, the search side of the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership isn’t showing all that much growth.

What do you think? Is Google, clearly one of the world’s dominant tech companies, in any trouble here?

Was its jump into the mobile phone hardware market misguided, or do you think Nexus One sales may still take off? We welcome your thoughts in the comments section below.

Will Microsoft slapping “7” on the rebranded Windows Mobile (now Windows Phone) OS be enough to counter Google’s Linux for mobile phones? It’s easy to expand the Microsoft vs. Google antithesis to Windows Phone and Android – proprietary vs. open source, paid vs. free, Windows vs. Linux, etc. Most would undoubtedly agree that Windows Phone and Android being placed at opposite poles of the mobile-phone world is more than just a matter of perception.

Next week, on March 15th, it will be the first month since Microsoft showcased the Windows Phone 7 Series at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. At the same time, the week of March 15th will be synonymous with the Redmond company beginning to evangelize Windows Phone 7 to developers, as the company’s MIX10 event kicks off. Still, the general public will have to wait until the end of 2010, just ahead of the holiday season, to get their first Windows Phone 7 device. And in the meanwhile, Google will have plenty of elbow room to continue growing its marketshare, which has virtually exploded since the end of 2009.

It’s also extremely easy to credit the underlying Linux OS and open source model for the success of Android. “42.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the November to January period, up 18 percent from the August through October period. RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 43.0 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, rising 1.7 percentage points versus three months earlier. Apple ranked second with 25.1 percent share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft at 15.7 percent, Google at 7.1 percent (up 4.3 percentage points), and Palm at 5.7 percent. Google’s Android platform continues to see rapid gains in market share,” comScore revealed.

In the US, Windows Mobile continues to own more than twice as much market share as Android, but this situation will soon change, especially if Google’s mobile OS continues to grow by 4% leaps at every three months. In fact, taking into consideration just US customers, if Android’s growth holds steady, Google will own a larger size of the mobile operating-system market than Microsoft, by the time that the Windows Phone 7 Series drops. Especially seeing how Windows Mobile took a steep plunge, as steep as Android’s increase, dropping from 19.7% from November 2009 to just 15.7% in January 2010.

The good days when you can do no wrong and no evil

I’m sure that many in the open source community won’t agree with me, but Android’s explosion is not about Linux or open source, but about Google. Far from me to deny the advantages of an open source “germination” process for handset manufacturers, for mobile application developers or for the Mountain View-based search giant, but it’s Google that’s behind the fast-spreading Android “spores,” which are appearing on more and more smartphones. It is Google’s weight that made possible Android devices shipping at a rate of over 60,000 per day in the short time since the platform was launched.

Gartner has made available some extremely interesting statistics, which offer an insight into the evolution of Windows Mobile, Linux and Android on the mobile-OS market. In 2008, Symbian shipped on 52.4% of all smartphones sold globally with almost 73 million units acquired around the world. Research In Motion was second with 23 million and a 16.6% share of sales, Windows Mobile the third with 16 million and 11.8%, Mac OS X followed next with 11 million copies and 8.2%. Only 11.2 million Linux smartphones were sold in 2008, representing 8.1% of all sales that year.

At that time, Google was yet to release Android. But throughout 2009, the situation changed drastically. 46.9% of sales were Symbian smartphones, some 80,8 million, 19.9%, came from RIM (34.3 million), 14.4% were iPhones, namely 24,8 million iPhone OS devices. Statistics reveal that just 8.7% of all smartphones sold in 2009 came with Windows Mobile, 15 million, while the number of Linux handsets dropped dramatically to 8.1 million, representing just 4.7% of the sold devices. In 2009, 3.9% of all smartphones worldwide featured Android, 6.7 million units, Gartner revealed.

Interpreting the data offered by Gartner, it’s clear that manufactures that traditionally reserved devices for the open source OS were quick to embrace Android, explaining the drop in sales share of non-Android flavors of Linux. “The two best performers in 2009 were Android and Apple. Android increased its market share by 3.5 percentage points in 2009, while Apple’s share grew by 6.2 percentage points from 2008, which helped it move to the No. 3 position and displace Microsoft Windows Mobile,” Gartner said at the end of February 2010.

“Android’s success experienced in the fourth quarter of 2009 should continue into 2010 as more manufacturers launch Android products, but some CSPs and manufacturers have expressed growing concern about Google’s intentions in the mobile market,” Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner, explained at the time. “If such concerns cause manufacturers to change their product strategies or CSPs to change which devices they stock, this might hinder Android’s growth in 2010.”

Windows Phone 7 Series

The way I see it, the most consistent problem that has stood in the way of open source becoming as ubiquitous as Windows is market fragmentation. The paradox however is that, while open source would be more successful under a single banner, the divisions, diversity and multi-faceted universe are the valves that drive its anti-proprietary heart.

Microsoft was by no means actually slow to embrace mobile operating systems with Windows, but despite this, the company seemed out of breath with the Windows Mobile 6.5 release in 2009, and watched Apple slide past, being in danger of Google outrunning it as well. This although the Redmond company had an indisputable head-start over both Google and Apple. But just as indisputable, Microsoft failed to build a momentum for Windows Mobile, and now there’s nothing to conserve, and what little remains might prove insufficient to build growth at the same rate as its rivals, considering that the company is losing its grip on the market more and more with each passing day. Certainly, the hope is that Windows Phone 7 will fuel the Windows Mobile dying fire.

“Windows 7 Phone Series (…) that’s coming out this fall, is our new phone platform. And it’s not a me-too product, it’s an incredible social piece of lifestyle technology that has both cloud services with it that allows you to do Xbox gaming to Facebook to your music and movies and everything you want to watch on your mobile telephone, and it is an incredible product that we just gave some sneak peek demos of it last week or two weeks ago, and stay tuned for it,” Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner stated during a speech at the University of Zurich in Switzerland on March 5, 2010.

Still, I continue to believe that the vast majority of customers take a wide range of features and capabilities into consideration when buying a smartphone, but that the actual operating system is not a deal-breaking factor. From my point of view, handsets are being purchased for the overall experience – a combination of media features, hardware specifications (with the camera specs and touch interaction model key details), social networking and Internet-browsing capabilities, application and standards support and app ecosystem diversity and ease of access, and only lastly because of the actual operating system.

But Microsoft should in no way ignore the power of “Google” in “Google Android” devices. Taipei-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC) estimates that shipments of Android smartphones will reach 32 million units in just three years, namely in 2013. Telecom consultant Juniper Research expects 223 million smartphones to be shipped with open source operating systems by 2014. According to IDC, Google and its handset partners are going to make Android the second most used mobile operating system worldwide by 2013, with total sales of approximately 70 million devices.

With Windows Phone 7,Microsoft showed that it was on the right track, understanding that it was not about the operating system but rather about the phone experience. Now, the company needs to deliver on its promise of a new beginning.

I’ve often noticed nuances, not exactly subtle, of envy from Microsoft as company representatives pointed out that Google was now in a place where it could do no wrong. The vast majority of the projects that the search giant embarks on turn out to be gold mines, and Google gets applauded constantly for being, well, not Microsoft.

Not that Microsoft has a shortage of gold mines. The Windows Phone 7 Series, provided that it will be all that the company promised in Barcelona, will surely help turn things around. But realistically speaking, Microsoft needs to pick up the pace. In the long-term mobile OS marathon, it’s now short dashes, rhythm breaks and explosions of pace that seem to define success, at least on the short term, but guaranteed to also impact the evolution of OS vendors in the long run.

And for the time being, the software giant continues to move so slow that it’s in danger of coming too close to being pushed to the periphery of the mobile-OS market.

All those Android smartphone owners who have been wondering when they can ditch the outmoded Opera Mini 4.2 browser in favor of the latest beta can now unfold their pouts, stop that kicking, and remove their pounding fists from the floor. Opera Mini 5 beta for Androidhas arrived.

On Thursday, Opera Software pushed out the Android version of its Mini 5 browser that improves the browser experience for Java phones by leaps and bounds. The beta build is equipped with an updated interface that includes a new “speed dial” start screen featuring thumbnails of most-visited sites. The browser also supports tabs, a first for Mini but old hat on Opera Mobile.

Opera Mini 5 beta (beta 2, actually) and the nearly identical Opera Mobile 10 beta (for Symbian and Windows phones) have been making the mobile rounds since September. We’re fans of the latest advances to come to the free browser, and we’re looking forward to Opera making those changes final and retiring Opera Mini 4.2 (and Opera Mobile 9.6, while they’re at it.) We just wish that Opera had submitted Mini 5 beta to the Android Market sooner.

There’s no confirmation from Opera, but we’re speculating that Opera could officially flip the switch on at least one of the Opera Mini 5 variants at the CTIA trade show later in March.

To download Opera Mini 5 beta for Android, check the Android Market from your smartphone or point to mobile browser to www.opera.com/mini/next/.

For people who often bump up against ‘Out of Stock’ signs when they manage to find a store selling a coveted item, Google’s Product Search feature may be the solution for them. Owners of iPhone, Palm webOS phones or Android-run handsets can now hit Google Product Search to find out if items they wish to purchase are in stock at nearby participating retailers.

The official Google Mobile blogspot states that Best Buy, Williams-Sonoma, Sears, Pottery Barn and West Elm are listed among the participating retailers in Product Search. When the user looks up a particular item on Product Search, blue dots will appear in search results denoting availability of that item.

The adjacent ‘In stock nearby’ link can be tapped to navigate to the concerned retailers page and find out if the product is ‘In Stock’ or has been tagged with ‘Limited Availability’. If My Location is enabled or the user manually enters his location, he will be provided with information on the distance between the store and his location.

iPhone, Palm webOS and Android handset owners across the U.S. can avail of this new feature by visiting Google.com and selecting ‘Shopping’ from the ‘more’ link. Or ‘Shopping results’ may also be found on Universal Search results on the website.

Opera Mobile 10 beta 3

For smarter browsing

Download Opera Mobileversion 10.0 beta 3

NEW IN OPERA MOBILE 10 BETA 3

Get the best Internet experience on your smartphone. To download Opera Mobile directly, simply visit m.opera.com/mobile using your phone’s default Web browser.

Opera Link

Synchronize your bookmarks and Speed Dial between your mobile phone and desktop computer.

Faster browsing

Opera Mobile 10 beta is faster at rendering pages, zooming, panning and almost everything else you do with a browser. And pages load up to 50% faster than the previous version.

Speed Dial

Get to your favorite Web page with just one click, with a set of visual bookmarks that appear when you open a new tab. To add a new page, simply click on an empty Speed Dial slot.

Tabbed browsing

Browse several Web sites at the same time. Check your email in one window, Facebook in another, and Twitter in a third, all while easily jumping from one tab to another.

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More features

Opera Turbo

Opera’s servers compress Web pages up to 70%, greatly reducing the cost of browsing.

Touchscreen & keypad

The user interface has been optimized for both touchscreen and keypad-style mobile phones.

Typing less, browsing more

Save time with Web address auto-completion, password manager and inline editing.

Web standards

Opera 10 is based on the latest Opera browser engine so your favorite Web sites work as they do on a your computer.

Rich Web content

Browse Web applications sites like Facebook and Gmail, and enjoy the rich interaction.

Opera Dragonfly

Connect your mobile phone to your PC and debug Web applications remotely. Read more here.

Adaptive zoom

In just a few clicks easily pan and zoom into your desired content.

Privacy

Be in control of your privacy. Manage your passwords, history, cookies, and cache.

Saving pages and images

Save Web pages and images for later offline viewing.

See full list of features.

Not on a smartphone?

Check out the Opera Mini mobile browser. Opera Mini gives you a full Web experience for almost any phone.

Mobile operator or OEM?

With over 120 million shipped installations since 2004, Opera Mobile is the proven solution for full Web browsing on mobile devices. To learn more, please visit ourbusiness solutions page.

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) Flash 10.1 is expected to be available around the middle of this year. Flash 10.1 will offer a number of new features and enhancements that will benefit mobile users significantly.

However, there is a caveat to this statement. When the new release of Adobe Flash rolls out mobile users using handsets powered by Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 will not be able to perform the software upgrade as this release will be for new WP7 only. According to Antonio Flores, who spoke on behalf of Adobe, “We have made the tough decision to defer support for that platform until WinMo7. This is due to the fact that WinMo6.5 does not support some of the critical APIs that we need.”

This news certainly will not please many in the mobile community but to add to the misery, Android users and more specifically, Android phones without an ARM v7 Cortex chipset will also not have access to Flash 10.1 which would essentially limit usability to those that have one of either the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One or the upcoming HTC Legend and HTC Desire.

Read more about No Adobe Flash 10.1 Support On Windows Mobile 6.5 by Coolest Gadget Reviews

Google’s Android operating system has plenty to celebrate this holiday season — and now, a new trio of studies suggests the platform is poised for even more success in 2010.

There’s no question Android’s been enjoying plenty of time in the spotlight since the launch of Motorola’s Droid smartphone. But with dozens of new Android devices expected to debut in the coming months — possibly even including the omnipotent “Google Phone”(have you seen the things that phone can do?) — the biggest burst may still be ahead.

Android Invasion: The Second Phase

First up: consumer interest. A study released by ComScore this week finds overall awareness of the Android platform has skyrocketed since the start of the Droid’s memorable marketing campaign.

As recently as August, ComScore says, only 22 percent of mobile users had heard of Android at all. As of November, that number has jumped up all the way to 37 percent — a substantial increase in a short period of time.

Perhaps more important, though, ComScore’s research indicates 17 percent of people in the market for a new smartphone are now leaning toward an Android-powered device. That’s barely below than the number of people eyeing an iPhone: 20 percent.

Back in August, only 7 percent of smartphone shoppers were thinking about going the Android route. The active interest has more than doubled.

Android and Mobile Engagement

So what about actual engagement? AdMob — the mobile ad-serving company recently acquired by Google — just released some stats about mobile ad impressions served in November. The research shows some interesting trends.

According to AdMob, Android phones accounted for 27 percent of all US-based mobile ad impressions last month. That piece of the pie is still significantly smaller than the iPhone’s 55 percent, but it’s the rate of change that’s worth noting.

Within the span of a single month, Android’s share of US mobile ad impressions grew by 35 percent. The iPhone’s share, meanwhile, remained static.

The Android App Factor

Finally, an area often cited as a deterrent to Android adoption: apps. Even though Android’s App Market now supports around 20,000 options, some say it can’t compete with Apple’s 100,000-strong selection.

Subjective opinions aside, a newly released report predicts the tides in the app domain are about to shift. The analysis, by ABI Research, suggests the total number of mobile app downloads will more than double its current level by 2014. And while ABI believes the iPhone’s App Store will remain the leader in overall downloads, it anticipates that Apple’s stronghold will slowly give way to Android’s growth.

“The iPhone’s share of the app market will contract from its 2010 level during the latter part of the forecast period,” Wireless Research Associate Bhavya Khanna tells PC World sister publication PC Advisor. “The big beneficiary will be Android, which will see its market share of total application downloads increase from 11 percent of the market in 2009 to 23 percent in 2014.”

Is the iPhone cowering somewhere in a secure bunker? Don’t count on it; Apple’s pride and joy is in no danger of disappearing. But the mobile market is definitely evolving, and Android is the driving catalyst in the change. That’s something you don’t need Google Goggles to see.

It’s only a matter of time before another Android phone trumps Google’s Nexus One, and based on an early glimpse, the HTC Incredible could be the one.

PocketNow got some very unofficial photos of the HTC Incredible, along with word that the phone will run HTC’s Sense interface over Android 2.1. An earlier rumor from Engadget Mobile suggests the phone is coming to Verizon Wireless.

The Incredible packs a couple of the Nexus One’s key specs, including a 3.5- to 3.7-inch AMOLED display and a Snapdragon processor. The style is quite different, however, with a flat black face and a layered back side (colored red, in these photos) that seems to mold around the phone’s internals. Like the Nexus One, it appears to lack a physical keyboard.

Things get more interesting if this is the same phone as HTC’s Bravo, revealed in a product roadmap last December. As Phandroid notes, HTC’s roadmap literature refers to the phone by both names. In that case, expect the Incredible to have a 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, an optical mouse pointer, an FM radio and a digital compass. It’ll also support 720p video capture and DivX video playback, and will have sound from Dolby.

The person whooriginally leaked specsand photos of the Bravo/Incredible and other 2010 HTC phones believes this could be HTC’s flagship model. Looking at other phones in HTC’s roadmap, this is clearly the most powerful and feature-rich, and it could certainly stand up to the Nexus One, running the same version of Android — albeit with a different interface — with a few hardware improvements.

The only question, then, is whether an HTC phone can outdo a Google-branded phone in popularity. If the Nexus One’s sales don’t pick up, the Incredible shouldn’t have too much trouble

PC World