I first heard the term “Super Phone” used as it relates to a new category of devices at a conference I attended last month. I’ve thought for a while now that the industry needed to come up with a term other than smartphone to distinguish these new classes of devices. Even though I’m not completely in love with Super Phone as a term (and I’m pretty sure consumers don’t care about these terms anyway) it is perhaps the best so far.
If you've been waiting patiently for Verizon to push out the Android 2.2. Froyo update for the HTC Droid Incredible, not taking the easy option and opting for one of the unofficial ROMs that are circulating, then today could be the day your high standards are rewarded. Verizon has pinged us to let us know that they're pushing out Froyo for the Droid Incredible as an OTA update, complete with Adobe Flash Player 10.1.
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Firefox Mobile for Android and the Nokia N900 has been pushed out, or at least Mozilla's Alpha release of the smartphone browser. Natively supporting Firefox Sync - bringing desktop browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs to the mobile app - the new browser apparently concentrates on increasing speed and responsiveness, with Mozilla debuting their new "Electrolysis" and "Layers" technology.
Video demo after the cut
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It's no HTC Desire HD, but we like the original HTC Desire enough to be pleased its finally arrived on US shores thanks to U.S. Cellular. The carrier is now offering the Android 2.1 smartphone for $199.95 after a mail-in rebate, complete with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, HTC Sense UI and 3.7-inch Super LCD display (rather than the AMOLED panels that are in such short supply).
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RIM may have promised BlackBerry 6 updates for the Bold 9700, 9650 and Pearl 3G, but that doesn't mean you're going to get them any time soon. A leaked schedule document acquired by MobileSyrup purportedly from Canadian carrier Bell Mobility has revealed they don't plan to push out the new OS version until sometime in 2011. According to the document, Bell's 9700, Pearl 9100 and recently released Curve 3G 9300 will be left with OS 5.x for at least several months.
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Good news for owners of the original Motorola DROID desperate to see their web pages clogged up with Flash adverts, videos, games and animations. Verizon has just confirmed to us that they're pushing out an update for the DROID that will allow owners to download Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 from the Android Market.
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A newly filed patent application by RIM suggests the cellphone manufacturers designers are considering an extending, rotating form-factor that could allow for multiple hardware control surfaces such as a QWERTY keyboard and numeric keypad. The application, titled "Handheld electronic device with rotatable member", shows a phone with a pull-out second section that could be used in portrait or landscape orientation depending on messaging or phone use; however it could also offer a hardware keyboard on one side and a touchscreen display on the other.
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With Nokia World 2010 just around the corner, we're seeing plenty of news - official and otherwise - from the Finns. Fresh to Vodafone UK comes the C6, the company's latest QWERTY slider, with the carrier also announcing that if you want the green N8 then you'll have to see them too, since it's a network exclusive. Meanwhile there's more news on when exactly the N8 will hit shelves.
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According to a research firm called Research2guidance the total market for smartphone applications reached a whopping $2.2 billion in the first half of 2010. The revenue in the app market for the entire year of 2009 was only $1.7 billion so we have already passed that mark in half of this year.
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It seems even the threat of legal action can't keep Mobile-review's Eldar Murtazin from spilling the beans on unannounced Nokia handsets, with the latest on his test bench to be the upcoming Nokia C7-00. Spotted in the wild back in early June, the Symbian^3 handset has a 3.5-inch AMOLED 640 x 360 display and, Murtazin reckons, is basically the N8 with a mere 8-megapixel camera and no HDMI output.
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AMOLED was billed as the double-punch to traditional LCD panels on smartphones: better image quality and lower power consumption, adding up to a handset that lasted longer and was nicer to use. According to Laptop's testing, however, the reality isn't quite so clear cut. They put eight Android smartphones - including the DROID X, Epic 4G and EVO 4G - through their paces running a custom battery testing app, and found that Motorola's LCD panels actually came to the top of the pile.
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Nokia’s struggles in smartphones are well documented, and I’m not going to rehash them here. However, if you live in the U.S. it is easy to overlook just how huge and successful Nokia is. Even in smartphones, Nokia is the global volume leader, and when it comes to featurephones, Nokia literally sells about six dozen of them in the time it takes to read this sentence – every minute of every day. Most of those are basic voice phones sold in emerging markets like India and Africa, but Nokia is also the market leader in multimedia featurephones. Nokia’s latest entry in that category is the X3 Touch and Type (not to be confused with the X3, launched last year), which is a Series 40 phone with a touchscreen on top and a physical numeric keypad below. I find the X3 Touch and Type deeply disturbing.
