The new Android Racer from ZTE is now officially launched exclusively with 3. The handset will be available on prepay for less than 100 pound. 

The prototype of the Android Racer was revealed back in April of this year, and is the first ZTE handset operating with Android that is under £100. It will retail to the public at £99.99. 

It seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to the industry, as reported on the Mobile Choice Today website, that the new handset is running on Android 2.1. Éclair. What this means to the user is that they have the pleasure of enjoying multi-touch capability, as well as the capacity of voice-to-text in all text fields. There is also a 3D photo gallery and live wallpapers. 

The basic handset boasts a 2.8-inch resistive QVGA touchscreen, and a very respectable 3.2MP camera. There is 256MB of internal memory, and it incorporates Bluetooth and 7.2Mbps HSDPA capabilities. 

As the Android Racer is a Google Android phone, users can choose from a range of apps from the Android market. Users can access a range of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Spotify and Twitter and have access to a load of games and navigational aids. 

It was first thought back in April that the Chinese manufacturer would be using Android 1.6 as the operating system, given the low entry level price of the new handset but the company has surprised the market. The ZTE Android Racer is expected to become available at the end of July and will be exclusive to 3. 

You know how we'll know when we're living in the future? When user manuals for gadgets start leaking out before that gadget even officially exists. Oh, that's now. Welcome to the future!

If you're just itchin' to know all the right places to touch the Droid 2, you're in luck: the user manual has just leaked out.

Unearthed by DroidLife, the guide confirms some interesting tidbits:

• If you were hopin' for vanilla, untouched Android.. sorry! From the screenshots, it looks like it's running the same build of Motorola's MOTO BLUR interface as the Droid X.
• The screenshots look oh-so-Android-2.2ish, with a handful of hints indicating that this thing will ship with Froyo out-of-the-box.
• Like the Droid X before it, it looks like the Droid 2′s on-screen keyboard will be multitouch. It'll also come pre-loaded with Swype.

You can find the link to the full user manual here. Find any other gems lurking within its pages? Let us know in the comments below.

Up until now HTC devices have been sold across China under the Dopod brand (Dopod being a subsidiary of HTC). However, the Taiwanese company decided that its name, HTC, is already popular enough in China to start selling there HTC-branded devices. And the Android-based among them will feature Android’s latest Froyo right out of the box.

I’m not sure when exactly the first HTC-branded phones for China will show up but one thing is for certain: they will know how Froyo tastes. And those might also turn out company’s first devices to feature the latest so far Android version.

As the HTC website reveals, the China-loving HTC Desire, HTC Wildfire as well as the TD-SCDMA-compatible HTC Tianyi will run the Android 2.2 with the Sense UI on top of it.

Twitter for Android the "official" Android Twitter client  just got another update (this version is v1.0.2), and changes include the following:

• Is faster than the previous version
• Auto refresh is now added
• People search is fixed

It's good, it's simple, but it's still not as good as other Twitter clients out there.

Google Maps for Android is a bit like Android itself. always changing and improving. Google have just released the latest update for Maps, version 4.4 and it's the 6th update the app has received in as many months. This particular update is all about finding things around you and it gives the user a new icon to use, "Places". Essentially 'Places' acts a bit like Yelp, allowing the user to find places around him and if you find that you are searching for the same sort of places again and again irrespective of your location then you can customise the search to load your own categories e.g. petrol station. That's all very well and good, but the update goes further by offering additional information like the opening and closing times of shops and directions to the place you've just searched using the compass. You'll need to be running Android 1.6 or later to take advantage of this update, but if so then you can grab it right now. BlackBerry users should expect to see this on their platform of choice in the near future too.

Acer Android powered Stream confirmed for Expansys with Many New Features packs 1Ghz CPU and 5Mp camera recording HS Video 24Fps@720p and all that in a Superb AMOLED Capacitive touch screen and 2GB internal memory expandable with microSDs up to 32GB + 2GB internal = 34GB . Also its has New Feature Wireless Video Streaming which is Similar to the Wi-Di Technology (Wireless Display) works with any compatible device or HDTV. Don't forget the HDMI and the Wifi (802.11 N) Support away better than the (b/g)

Technical Details

Here comes another cheap Android, Orange Tactile Internet. The unassumingly called smartphone can be yours on a contract for only 1 euro, but don't get excited just yet.

To get the Tactile Internet for 1 euro you'd have to sign a 2 year contract with a minimum of 51 euro monthly tariff.

Orange Tactile Internet is a smallish handset with okaysh specs sheet 2.8 inch QVGA touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel snapper, 256MB ROM, 3G with HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS with A-GPS, Bluetooth, FM radio, 3.5mm audio jack and microSD slot (2GB card included).

Nothing fills in those moments of boredome quite like a good emulator on your phone, living your glory days of games gone by you can quickly get absorbed and forget you were ever bored in the first place. The PSX4Droid app, from ZodTTD and yongzh, will allow you to do just that with PlayStation games now that it has launched in the Android Market. It's not free, but at $5.99 its not going to be breaking the bank and given what it can do is sure to be pretty popular. Its not 100% perfect at the moment, there are some glitches, but for the most part it looks to be working pretty well and you can check it out in action in the videos below. The first video shows a Samsung Galaxy S running Final Fantasy VII and Ridge Racer, whilst the other two show off a Nexus One running Crash Bandicoot and a Dell Streak being used alongside a Wii controller.

Check Video Below

Statistics of mobile web usage often point to the iPhone as the king of the hill. The fine print however is that those statistics use data from the US only.

So, here are our two cents web traffic from mobile devices to our site. which should give the other side of the story. It's probably not 100% representative of the worldwide statistics, but at least it’s more global.

And while we’re in statistics geek mode, we’ll also take a peek at how Android OS versions are distributed…

Here are the Google Analytics graphs and charts for www.gsmarena.com. The unusual peak you see is from the iPhone 4 announcement – interestingly, the majority of that traffic came from iPhone users and a few Android users. Symbian owners weren’t particularly impressed if mobile web traffic is any indication.

Mobile web traffic statistics for our site from Google Analytics (click for full size)

As you can see, Symbian is on top with a healthy margin and iPhone clocks in second. However, if you add iPhones, iPods and iPads for a cumulative iOS stat it comes out ahead by a about 3.5%.

Other than that, it’s interesting to note that mobile browsers included with feature phone OSes from the various manufacturers score below 5%. Windows Mobile isn’t doing too hot either.

One possible explanation for this is that feature phone owners are using Opera Mini for most of their browsing (as they should) – shame that Google Analytics doesn’t include Opera Mini in the statistics.

In a another statistics news of the day, we just got the latest Android OS version distributionfrom Android Developers. The good news is that Android 2.1 Eclair very rapidly climbed to over 50%. Versions 1.5 Donut and 1.6 Cupcake are hovering around 20% each. The bad thing is that Android 2.2 Froyo has barely achieved 3.3%.

And it will be a while until it can climb any higher – manufacturers have to release ROMs with Froyo and some are still working on Eclair. For now, it’s just the Nexus One phones that are feasting on Froyo desserts.