according to research from comScore and Compete, that 37% of US mobile users had heard of Android in November 2009. This was up from 22% as recently as August, likely due to the Verizon Droid ad campaign.

And 17% of mobile users in the market for a new smartphone in the next three months planned to buy an Android phone, compared with 20% who would pick up an iPhone.

Usage patterns for Android and iPhone owners were very similar, and tended to differ from those of other smartphone users as well as from those of feature phone owners.

via: mashable

NYtimes.com Article By MIGUEL HELFT Published: January 5, 2010

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google stepped up its attack on the mobile phone industry on Tuesday, introducing a new touchscreen phone called Nexus One to compete with the iPhone.

The device, which was built by HTC, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, has a 3.7-inch screen and runs the latest version of Google's Android operating system. It is just 11.5 millimeters thin, or about the thickness of a No. 2 pencil, and weighs 130 grams, or no more than a small Swiss Army knife, said Erick Tseng, a senior product manager. It has a 5-megapixel camera and an LED flash and can shoot both still images and video.

"The Nexus One is an exemplar of what is possible with Android on mobile phones," Mario Queiroz, a vice president for product management at Google, said during a news conference at Google's headquarters here.

Read the rest of the article at NYTimes.com

Attention iPhone facebook users, your developer (the only developer) had just quit making enhacements to the facebook app on the iPhone.  The reason behind this is that he doesn't like the iPhone app approval policy, here's some quotes from his statement about the apps approval policy on the iPhone.

My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple's policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.

The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users."

It's not the end of the World, some other engineers/developers will continue his work, but i doubt it would be as good.

Thanks Techcrunch for this story

Article from news.bbc.co.uk,  - Vodafone says it will start selling the iPhone in the UK on 14 January 2010.

It is the latest of the UK's major phone networks to offer the iPhone to customers.

The cheapest tariff available is £30 a month for 24 months, plus additional handset charges ranging from £59 (iPhone 3G 8GB) to £239 (3GS 32GB).

Both business and consumer contracts are subject to a 1GB monthly data limit on mobile internet use. Orange has a "fair use" limit of 750MB per month.

For complete news, check out bbc.co.uk 

Thanks to BGR for this news.

Sales of the iPhone, the iconic mobile device made by Apple Inc., broke the half-million mark in the four months since its South Korean market debut, KT Corp. said Thursday.

KT, which sells the iPhone here, said South Korea was one of the seven countries in the world where sales of the smartphone topped 500,000 units in less than a year.

The telecom operator, also the nation's second-largest mobile carrier, said it activates 4,000 new iPhones every day.

The iPhone went on sale in South Korea on Nov. 28, 2009, after the South Korean government, following months of reviewing, granted the Cupertino, California-based Apple final approval to use so-called location-based services, such as maps, in the smartphone.

Source: unwiredview

According to Boy Genius Report, all of AT&T's pre-order iPhones have been reserved as of 4:30pm EST. And if you placed an order any time after that, you might have a bit of a wait on your hands.

AT&T's official statement confirming the sellout:

"Because of the incredible interest in iPhone 4, today was the busiest online sales day in AT&T history. As of Tuesday afternoon, customers who preorder iPhone 4 moving forward will receive their device on June 25 or later, depending on when the order is placed. We'll email customers with confirmation once their order is placed, and again when it ships. In addition, we will have devices available on a first-come, first-serve basis in our stores beginning on June 24."

source: BGR

The Apple iPhone 4 is set to go on sale Thursday. Judging by the record demand during the pre-sale period, the newest iPhone will make a huge sales splash, especially with old iPhone owners trading up.

Here are five bruises on the new Apple iPhone that may engender complaint.

No. 5: A Skimpy Camera

As smartphone challengers like HTC, Motorola and Nokia embrace the megapixel race with 8-megapixel and 12-megapixel cameras, Apple's new iPhone keeps it cheap with a 5-megapixel model.

No. 4: No Swype

If you've seen Swype or used it, you know why this omission makes the list. Typing on a touchscreen is a challenge as the flat glass surface offers few clues to where your fat fingers are precisely making contact. It's an error-prone process that gives one a longing for the raised keys of the BlackBerry keyboard from Research In Motion.

No. 3: Video Calling

Okay, it's not totally bait and switch, but Apple's hot new iPhone video calling feature, FaceTime, comes with lots of asterisks and a limited applicability.

No. 2: iPhone 4 Shortages

Strong demand is only half the story for Apple's iPhone sales debut. Limited supply is the other. A shortage of in-plane display panels, the crucial part of Apple's touted retina display screens, has forced Apple's contract manufacturers to cut production rates in half to 1 million iPhones a month.

No. 1: No Verizon iPhone

A new iPhone is big. But a new iPhone at Verizon? Much bigger.

source: yahoo finance

Apple's stock is at it's all time high, but it's probably still a great buy, mentioned by many experts in Wall Street.  That's because people are just loving apple products, specifically the iPhone.  iPhone 4 was just on sale couple of days ago, and it already made some amazing number, more 1,700,000 units in just 3 days.  Quite impressive indeed, here's it's press release this morning.

CUPERTINO, California-June 28, 2010-Apple today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone 4 through Saturday, June 26, just three days after its launch on June 24. The new iPhone 4 features FaceTime, which makes video calling as easy as one tap, and Apple's new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in stunning text, images and video.

"This is the most successful product launch in Apple's history," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply."

iPhone 4 also features a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, HD 720p video recording, Apple's A4 processor, a 3-axis gyro and up to 40 percent longer talk time-in a beautiful all-new design of glass and stainless steel that is the thinnest smartphone in the world.

iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, the newest version of the world's most advanced mobile operating system, which features Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, deeper Enterprise support and Apple's new iAd mobile advertising platform.

Pricing and Availability iPhone 4 is available in the US for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model in both Apple and ATT's retail and online stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart stores. iPhone 4 is also available in the UK, France, Germany and Japan and will be available in an additional 18 countries by the end of July-Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Many stores are still out of stock, so just hang on tight Apple getting some more units.

source: boygeniusreport

The company Stream is announcing a new version of iRecord Pro which it added supports for Apple iPad and iPhone 4.  Movies and music are now a breeze to install on these devices simply by pressing a single button. Take your new iPad or iPhone 4 to its maximum potential by making all your personal media, from CDs and DVDs, to Pandora and Netflix memberships, portable.

iRecord provides High Resolution Recording with the following features

• Full D1 (720x480/576) at 30/25 frames per second
  
• VGA (640x480) at 30/25 frames per second
  
• iPhone native resolution (480x320) at 30/25 frames per second
  
• PSP native resolution (480x272) at 30/25 frames per second
  
• QVGA(320x240) at 30/25 frames per second
  
• Records from any analog video source including DVD/CD player, TV, DVR, TiVo®, VCR, or any cable/satellite set-top box

iRecord Pro is priced at $269.99. It can be ordered from www.iRecord.com and is available from leading retailers, catalogs, and on-line merchants. For current owners, the latest firmware is downloadable for $9.99 form www.iRecord.com.

source: iRecord

Alright Verizon, enough with making fun of the new iPhone's receiption problem.  Apple has officially release a statement that the iPhone 4 receiption problem will be fixed for good.  Following is Apple's letter to iPhone 4 owners talking about the problem was due to incorrect calculation of the signal strength, note the fix will be available in few weeks.  Do you believe it?

Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple's history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T's recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone's bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same- the iPhone 4's wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Apple

source: BGR

South Korea's telecom big KT Corp. said Wednesday it had acquired greater than a 100,000 reservations for the iPhone four in the first day of preorders for the latest mannequin of Apple Inc.'s smartphone.

KT, the native distributor of Apple's iPhones and the second-largest cellular carrier within the nation, said greater than a 100,000 individuals had positioned a preorder for the smash-hit smartphone. A preorder, nonetheless, is topic to cancellation if a customer chooses to opt out.

The iPhone four is proving rather more fashionable than Apple's earlier model, the iPhone 3GS, which received sixty five,000 preorders in the first 5 days of reservations in the country. It took 5 days for the Galaxy S, Samsung Electronics Co.'s flagship smartphone released in June, to interrupt the 100,000 sales milestone in the domestic market.

Upon opening at 6 a.m. Wednesday, the preorder Web page for the iPhone four skilled a delay for about one hour as the server was overloaded by tens of thousands of customers accessing the site at the similar time, in response to a KT spokesman.

KT started receiving preorders with out stating the exact date it will ship the model. The iPhone 4 will likely be launched someday in September, in line with KT.

South Korea was originally on the list of 18 international locations for the iPhone four's July release, but it was the one country dropped from the list. Apple and KT postponed the launch citing regulatory requirements.

Apple's previous model, the iPhone 3GS, which was released in South Korea on the finish of 2009, topped 850,000 in gross sales in about eight months.

KT is hoping to boost its smartphone gross sales and retain subscribers as its rival SK Telecom Co., South Korea's prime mobile carrier, sold greater than 600,000 models of Samsung's Galaxy S as of last month, amid the delay within the iPhone four's local release.

source: unwiredview

Businessweek.com reported that there's a good chance that Verizon will be releasing the iPhone, because Verizon seems to boost their cell service network to handle a more massive traffic.

There's no telling yet whether or when AT&T (T) might lose its position as the sole U.S. carrier of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. But in the event Apple opts to partner with other mobile-phone service providers, Verizon Wireless says it's up to the task.

Verizon Wireless has even made upgrades that would make its network more capable of handling extra traffic that would be generated by the iPhone, Verizon Wireless Chief Technology Officer Anthony Melone says in an interview.

"We have put things in place already," Melone tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "We are prepared to support that traffic."

AT&T has come under fire for the spotty performance of its network. Vexed by dropped calls and slow download speeds, some consumers say the company was unprepared for the surge in traffic that's resulted from iPhone use. Verizon Wireless in TV commercials has mocked AT&T's network coverage, and Melone says his company's equipment would do a better job catering to the heavy data demands of iPhone customers. "Absolutely, I think we could handle it," he says.

via: businessweek.com

Well, not exactly verizon wireless said because it wasn't official nor public.  Bloodberg somehow was able to obtain this information which they think is pretty accurate.

Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone company, will start selling Apple Inc.'s iPhone next year, ending AT&T Inc.'s exclusive hold on the smartphone in the U.S., two people familiar with the plans said.

The device will be available to customers in January, according to the people, who declined to be named because the information isn't public. Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, and Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, declined to comment.

The iPhone, which has been the sole domain of rival AT&T in the U.S. since June 2007, will give Verizon a boost in its competition for smartphone customers, UBS AG analyst John Hodulik said in an interview. Verizon customers, who numbered 92.8 million at the end of the first quarter, may buy 3 million iPhones a quarter, he estimates.

"Apple is going to dramatically increase the number of devices it sells in the U.S. when exclusivity at AT&T ends," said Hodulik, who is based in New York and rates Verizon shares "neutral." "It's hard to ignore the quality issues that AT&T has faced."

Verizon Wireless, which is building a high-speed fourth- generation network, plans to unveil several devices that will run on the new technology in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam has said.

Continue this story at bloomberg

Definitely a funny ad came out form Motorola, this ad will be hitting the newspaper tomorrow, according to Droid-Life, the popular blog for Android OS plateform.

Took Motorola a minute to counter attack the iphone, besides of course the iDon't ad's which a lot of people don't know was a shot at the phone even then. Good job on this one though, funny. Oh and am I tripping, or is the HTC Evo and this phone the same device but different branding's, specs wise?

Took Motorola a minute to counter attack the iphone, besides of course the iDon't ad's which a lot of people don't know was a shot at the phone even then. Good job on this one though, funny. Oh and am I tripping, or is the HTC Evo and this phone the same device but different branding. Says Antonio Johnson