smartphone

Flash Player 10 beta coming to most smartphones this fall

Back at GSMA 2009, Adobe Systems announced that it would bring Flash Player 10 to a number of smartphones in 2010, and it looks like the company is making good on its promise.

In a Q2 audio press release, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen confirmed that Adobe will release a beta version of Flash Player 10 in October for a number of smartphone browsers, including Windows Mobile, Google Android, Palm WebOS, and Symbian. In addition, Narayen said ARM, Nvidia, Broadcom, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm are currently optimizing the player for their products.

Obviously, this is great news for smartphone owners, … Read more

T-Mobile announces second Google phone

Competition in the smartphone market is heating up this summer as one new hot smartphone after another hits the street. The latest is T-Mobile's next Google Android device, called the MyTouch 3G.

T-Mobile will announce the new smartphone Monday. It is the second smartphone the carrier has introduced that uses Google's open-source mobile operating system, Android. T-Mobile introduced the world's first Google Android phone, called the G1, last fall. And so far the company claims it has sold over 1 million devices.

The MyTouch 3G is manufactured by HTC and is essentially the same hardware design as the Google Ion, which is also known as the HTC Magic. The device was introduced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February and is now being sold by Vodafone in various markets around the world.

The Google Ion/HTC Magic has been described as thinner than the G1 and slightly smaller than Apple's iPhone.… Read more

WebOS 1.0.3 update available now for Palm Pre

Hey Palm Pre owners, if you haven't heard by now, there's a little present waiting for you on your smartphone. Palm has pushed out an over-the-air update for your downloading pleasure that brings a number of feature enhancements to the Pre.

The company has posted a full feature list of WebOS 1.0.3 on its support site, but some highlights include:

Non-SSL Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) mail servers are now supported. Events created in your Google calendar (either in Calendar on your phone or in Google online) that contain a symbol or accented character in the event name … Read more

Palm WebOS SDK release planned for end of summer

With the Palm Pre successfully launched, the next question on some people's mind is when the WebOS SDK will be released so they can get more apps for the smartphone and we now have an answer--sort of.

On Friday, Palm updated its Developer Network blog to let users know that while its eager to open up the SDK to a wider audience, the software and developer services simply aren't ready to support this yet. Their goal is to release the SDK by the end of summer.

In the short term, Palm said it will expand its early-access program … Read more

Buy an iPhone? No thanks, I'm going Nokia

NEW YORK--Collins Osei, who had bought an iPhone 3G last year, came to the AT&T store Friday not to buy the latest-generation iPhone 3G S, but instead he wanted to downgrade to a less expensive Nokia phone.

Osei said his decision to go back to a basic-feature phone was all about cost. The iPhone and its service plan are simply too expensive, he said. Osei, who is in the middle of his two-year contract with AT&T, had his iPhone 3G stolen recently. But he said replacing it with a new one would cost too much. Instead, he picked up a Nokia 2600 for a mere $43.

But Osei's decision didn't hinge just on the upfront cost of the phone. He also said he was tired of paying the additional $30 a month data charge that is mandatory with the iPhone.

"The iPhone plan was just too expensive," he said. "They made me pay $30 extra a month for data, and I don't really need the Internet on my phone. So I went back to a regular phone. And now I'm on a plan that costs $39.99 a month."

Osei might not be the only consumer out there turned off by the high cost of the iPhone service fee. Unlike previous iPhone launch days, there was no line of people this morning waiting outside the AT&T Time Square store hoping to get the latest iPhone 3G S. In fact, it looked like more customers were leaving the store empty-handed or with other devices than those leaving with new iPhones.… Read more

T-Mobile Dash 3G coming in July; more Android details next week

For those of you who don't care about a certain phone from a certain fruit-flavored company, you might be interested to know that T-Mobile announced on Wednesday the upcoming availability of its latest smartphone, the T-Mobile Dash 3G.

The Dash 3G is T-Mobile's take on the HTC Snap, which debuted at CTIA 2009. The carrier expects the smartphone to ship nationwide in July, though it did not release a specific date or pricing at this time. Sprint also announced that it will offer the HTC Snap on June 21 for $149.99 with a two-year contract, so we … Read more

Palm responds to Apple's warning

On Tuesday, Apple issued a warning that it does not support iTunes synchronization with "non-Apple digital media players" and that future versions of the software may put an end to any such capability. While Apple didn't point any fingers, it's hard to believe the warning wasn't directed right at the Palm Pre, which shows up as an iPod when connected to iTunes and allows you to sync non-DRM media to the smartphone.

Palm isn't taking it lying down and has responded to Apple's threats. Speaking to John Paczkowski of the Wall Street Journal, … Read more

Augmented reality: iPhone 3G S killer app?

While video recording, more storage space, faster processor speeds, and better games have been the main calling cards for the iPhone 3G S, the biggest reason to upgrade may be yet to come--and it has to do with the seemingly most innocuous feature of all, the magnetometer.

Imagine a browser in which you view the real world through a camera lens and a heads-up display picks out interest points amid the living cityscape. This type of augmented reality has been the stuff of science fiction, but the cell phone browser Layar by Dutch software developer SPRXmobile claims to make it real. See the video for yourself.

Layar takes the sort of GPS POI data in current map-based apps, like ATMs, houses for sale, or nearby hotspots, and displays them overlaid on the landscape as seen through the camera lens.

It's debuting later this month for Android phones in the Netherlands--not exactly a huge starting demographic, but if it works, this could be the start of something big.… Read more

The Real Deal 166: Phone communications

We cover why you would or would not want to keep your landline and what the best and newest technologies are for telephony over the Internet.

Listen now: Download today's podcast Subscribe now: iTunes (audio) | iTunes (video) | RSS (audio) | RSS (video)… Read more