Android Evangelist

Those who say there are no decent Twitter apps for Android simply haven’t found the right one. When the Android Market first opened, you could sign in, watch the handful of new apps being uploaded every day, and generally know everything that was available on the platform. There really were only a couple of Twitter clients.

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Though there are more than twenty full Twitter clients available on the Android platform, only a couple of apps continue to dominate the space. Twidroid, one of the first Android Twitter apps, is frequently featured as a must-have app for the platform, and is a suggested download from Verizon. Seesmic is somewhat newer than Twidroid and is one of Google’s top six featured apps along with Pandora, Facebook, and YouTube in the Nexus One campaign

Today, another new Android Twitter client launched, called TweetCaster from Handmark. This one has been in a limited beta for the last couple of weeks and has already received high praise. […]

READ MORE >> Hands-on with TweetCaster for Android | Wireless News – Betanews

Firefox is set to release an Android-version of its popular open-source mobile browser in the coming months- setting the stage for Mozilla, makers of the widely popular Firefox desktop browser, to become an equally dominant player in the world of mobile browsing.

A mobile version of Firefox has long been a desire for the droves of Mozilla faithfuls, and has been in the works for what seems like an eternity.  Honing the feature-set made popular with the desktop version, the mobile version is set to be a world-class mobile browser, taking full advantage of all the latest improvements and technology in mobile browsing.

READ MORE >> Firefox Sets Sights On Android For Mobile Browsing Dominance, Forget The iPhone : Mobile Marketing Watch – The Pulse Of The Mobile Marketing Community

Following Apple’s unveiling of the long-awaited iPad yesterday, hardware vendor MSI has revealed that its upcoming Android tablet, which was first shown at CES this year, will debut in the second half of 2010 for $500.

The MSI tablet is built on NVIDIA’s Tegra SoC and has a ten-inch touchscreen display. If reports about Apple’s A4 are accurate, Tegra’s Cortex A9 should put the MSI tablet on equal footing with the iPad in raw computing power.

READ MROE >> MSI’s 10-inch Tegra/Android tablet coming this year for $500

It’s not the best, but it looks like the first image of the Sprint-HTC collaborative smartphone, going by the name Supersonic, has popped up on the web.

READ MORE >> Photo leaks of Sprint HTC Android-based device with Wimax | The Toybox | ZDNet.com

Leena Rao

TechCrunch.com
Tuesday, January 26, 2010; 7:50 AM

FunMobility’s picture messaging app for the iPhone, called FunMail, has a seen a fair amount of traction, with 100,000 downloads since its launch in November. Today, the developers are rolling out a similar app for Android phones. You can access the app here.

FunMail’s Picture Messaging App Launches On Android – washingtonpost.com

by Jonathan Leggett

New rumours suggest that HTC is going to be creating an Android-based follow up to its Windows Mobile HD2 and the technical specifications are promising.

For the time being it is codenamed the HTC Supersonic and on paper and in some low resolution spy images it looks exciting.

It will have a 4.3 inch screen using OLED technology to keep the power consumption down and the overall package slim and it will have the same 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm that powers the Nexus One, along with version 2.1 of Android to boot.

Top 10 Mobile Phones » News » HD2 sequel to ditch WinMo for Android

by Sean Ludwig

T-Mobile will announce a partnership with media syncing app developer doubleTwist, according to TechCrunch. The app will be pre-installed on some of its Android phones, including the new myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition handset. This is big news for the Android community since no Android phones come with syncing software akin to iTunes. As of now, users mount SDs card to their computers and drag and drop the files onto phones.

T-Mobile to Tie DoubleTwist Sync to Android – Reviews by PC Magazine

By James Sherwood • Get more from this author

18th January 2010 12:54 GMT

LG is now officially part of the Android smartphone clan, today launching its first phone based on the Google OS.

LG’s In TouchMax GW620: runs Android and is available now

The In TouchMax GW620 will bring “apps to the masses”, LG promised, by allowing users to connect to Android Market, Google’s version of Apple’s App Store. Android Market currently holds around 20,000 apps, LG said.

The GW620 has a 3in touchscreen display from under which a physical Qwerty keyboard slides out. The combination of virtual and physical keypads makes the GW620 convenient for social networking, LG added.

Speaking of social networking, the GW620 comes pre-installed with LinkBook, an LG application that allows you to go directly to a friend’s social networking profile from the phone’s contact list. LinkBook also delivers status updates in real time.

Just like Google’s Nexus One, the GW620 has a 5Mp camera on its rear. However, LG has added auto face-tagging and “Face-to-Action”, which lets you SMS, MMS or join your friend’s social networking site simply by touching their face in a picture.

Physical and virtual keyboards suit the phone to social networking

In terms of connectivity, the GW620 supports HSDPA 3G speeds of up to 7.2Mb/s and Bluetooth. Data is stored on memory cards. The phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

You can get LG’s In TouchMax GW620 now for free from both T-Mobile and Virgin, provided you sign a £20 monthly contract with T-Mobile, or a £22-a-month contract with Virgin.

LG said last week that it will launch 20 smartphones this year, ten of which will be based on Android. ®

LG releases Android smartphone • Register Hardware

By Antony Bruno, Denver
From the minute it was introduced, Apple’s iPhone was destined to be a mobile music powerhouse given the device’s dual-role as an iPod. Competing smartphones have struggled to make that same mobile music connection, despite having many of the same applications and capabilities.
Supporters of phones based on the Android operating system from Google are getting some help in this matter through a number of recent partnerships designed to streamline their music capabilities. T-Mobile, the first U.S. wireless operators to embrace Android phones, is working with music management software company DoubleTwist. Under the deal, T-Mobile will both embed the DoubleTwist software in upcoming Android-based devices – including the new myTouch Fender special edition phone – as well as encourage existing Android users to download the technology.
DoubleTwist operates much like iTunes in that it’s used to create playlists, transfer files between devices, and otherwise handle all the music management functions needed on a mobile phone. Android devices have no default music management software, leaving users on their own to figure out how to interact with music on the phone.
DoubleTwist has emerged as a popular iTunes alternative for service providers. It earlier struck a deal with Amazon to provide its technology to users of the retailer’s MP3 store. Android users can also download a mobile version of the Amazon MP3 store to buy and download music but, again, it relies on users to find and download the app on their own.
In Europe, mobile entertainment firm Aspiro created an app to bring its music streaming to Android devices as well. And of course Spotify offers an Android app to provide paying members access to its on-demand streaming service.
While many streaming music services like Pandora have found huge success on the iPhone, others like DoubleTwist are finding more success on rival devices by offering them the capabilities needed to compete against Apple. Myxer for instance found that both Android and BlackBerry owners are far more active visitors its mobile content Web site than iPhone users. The company-which sells ringtones, videos, games and other entertainment content-says it saw seven times as many downloads to Android-based devices than iPhone in the fourth quarter of last year. The BlackBerry Curve is the top phone on the company’s site, responsible for 10% of all visits over the last two years. All BlackBerry devices combined represent 67% of the company’s traffic.

Android Turns Up The Music

Motorola has already confirmed its commitment to the Google Android platform with the highly successful Motorola Droid available through Verizon, and rumored to be released by Telus either tomorrow or the 2nd week of February as the Motorola Milestone. Well, it seems an even more interesting Android phone is coming to AT&T from Moto too.

Apparently named the MOTOSPLIT, this smartphone takes on quite the unique form factor. The keyboard splits in two, hence the handset’s name, not unlike what we had in the ancient Nokia 6820 of old. Sorta.

In addition to the split QWERTY keyboard design and Google Android operating system, the MOTOSPLIT will also get equipped with that hot Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon processor. The user interface could be MOTOBLUR, but we can’t say for sure.

Word on the street has the Motorola MOTOSPLIT hitting AT&T in the third quarter of this year. Pricing has yet to be revealed, but I’m guessing that it’ll be in the $200 range with contract.

AT&T to get Snapdragon-powered MOTOSPLIT with Android – Mobile Magazine