Testing out polls this week, I posted a quick 3-choice poll on the best smartphone. Unbeknownst to me, our readers are far more passionate about their smartphones than I could have imagined and our comment board lit up like a Christmas tree of people wanting to see more options.
Rumour has it, Motorola is about to cancel its partnership with LiMo. There are more than 40 handsets on the market based on LiMo platform but Android continues to conquer LiMo’s customers day by day.
And Motorola is one of them. Motorola states about Android:
[Motorola] feels that the Android platform gives it a richer, more consistent foundation with strong support for the ecosystem and developer community.
Friday, I released a basic Top-3 poll for you to vote on your favorite smartphone. After hearing your comments, we’ve decided to extend it to include a few more operating systems that are – to my surprise – more popular than I’d originally thought.
My first two choices, iPhone and Blackberry, seem obvious enough. For the third, it was actually a tossup between the Palm devices and Google Android devices. So, we’ve extended our list.
In general these should cover the majority of smartphone manufacturers and operating systems. Some manufacturers aren’t mentioned specifically but the operating systems used by them are. If you think that anything else should have made the list, let me know!
New Windows Phones are lined up for release with the launch of the new Windows Mobile 6.5 OS. The major players being the AT&T HTC Pure, Verizon HTC Imagio and the Sprint Samsung Intrepid Windows Phones as presently advertised on the official Microsoft Windows Phone site.
With these new devices comes a branding face-lift for Microsoft’s mobile regime, beginning with a simplification of the name. Previously, ‘Windows Mobile (insert version here) Smartphones’ and now simply ‘Windows Phones’.
Microsoft has launched Windows Mobile 6.5 and will release an upgraded version with a touch interface in February 2010. The launch of Windows Mobile 7 is expected in April 2010, but Microsoft will continue to offer Windows Mobile 6.5 as a lower priced alternative.
Microsoft is planning to adopt a dual platform strategy to promote its Windows Mobile OS against the iPhone and Google Android. A Senior Engineer at Motorola was caught blabbing on his LinkedIn profile that Windows Mobile 7.0 might be sneaking into Beta right now.
The Palm Pixi runs on the Palm webOS™ platform. The CPU Qualcomm MSM7627 600 MHz processor and dedicated graphics accelerator makes the Pixi much different than others. The QWERTY keyboard on the Pixi is tiny and tightly spaced, but it’s definitely very usable!
However the Pixi lacks Wi-Fi connectivity, which is a vital aspect. It has full support for Microsoft Exchange, and POP3/IMAP4 email. Like its older brother, the Palm Pre, the accelerometer and GPS are still there. It has a 2.63 inch display with 320×400 resolution, a 2 megapixel camera, a 3.5 mm audio jack and Bluetooth.
We have some news to give you now regarding the release of the BlackBerry Storm 2 on Verizon. The BlackBerry Storm has been for sale for almost a year. RIM reworked the mechanics of their touch screen and built up a new(er) operating system for Storm 2.
BlackBerry Storm 2 will arrive for Verizon sometime in late October. According to our insiders, you can expect to see it show up just after October 25th. No pricing has been set for it yet, but it is now confirmed to arrive in that time frame. If you hear something different, let us know!
Apple is known for loading its software with handy shortcuts and tricks to make your life easier. There are some hidden short cuts in iPhone too. You might have noticed some of them accidently, but there are more shortcuts then you know. Let’s begin with button shortcuts for the headset. Check them out:
While not in a call, you can press the button once to activate iPod and playback your music.
When a call is ringing:
1. Press once to pick-up the call
2. Press twice to send the call to voicemail.
3. Press and hold center button for about two seconds to decline the call. You’ll also hear two low beeps that confirm you the call is declined.
While in a call, press once to end the call.
While you’re in a call and there is a second incoming call:
1. Press once to switch the calls and hold the previous call.
2. Press and hold the button for two seconds to ignore the new call.
Apple announced the availability of the iPhone OS 3.1 software update. This 3.1 update is free for iPhone users and for iPod Touch users with 3.0 update running on their device. It’s downloadable from iTunes. The new Genius Recommendations feature now suggests applications to users based on those installed on the device. And many known bugs were fixed.
iPhone owners can choose ringtones from the iTunes Store and download them wirelessly. Like the iPod Touch updates are being pushed as iPhone OS 3.1.1 update while for the iPhone Apple pushes it as iPhone OS 3.1 update. However, downloads over 10 MB require a Wi-Fi Connection.
The list of features and updates available with new iPhone OS 3.1 include…