The Android open mobile platform initiated by Google is one very exciting mobile operating system that I have been following. Mainly because it’s open source and the operating system core is based on Linux. I’ve recently gone to different mobile phone shops in the Philippines to check out whether Android based mobile phones are starting to appear at the shops. After my trips, I’m a bit happy and sad from what I have found. Here’s why.
Even as the world is experiencing an ecomonic upheaval it looks like that the American smartphone market has experienced a considerable growth in the last quarter of 2008. According to the NPD Group fourth quarter sales survey , smartphones have almost doubled to 23 percent of the US consumer market as compared to only 12 percent in the same quarter of 2007.
Also noteworthy is that half of the smartphones now sold has touch screens and 70 percent offer QWERTY keyboards. Two thirds of the smartphones now use 3G networks as compared to only 46 percent in 2007. Apple’s iPhone, Rim’s Blackberry Storm, the Android G1 phone are some of the top gainers.
It seems Qualcomm is also one of those companies benefitting from all these. The company has just announced that it’s Board of Directors approved an annual dividend increase of 6 percent per share of common stock. This brings the annual dividend to $0.68 per share.
I’ve heard about mobile phones with voice recognition, handwriting recognition, face recognition, business card recognition but I have to admit this is the first time I’ve heard about wind recognition for cell phones. At first it seems a little strange as to what possible applications it can have.
Now that Valentine’s day is coming up, maybe pantech should have added a “nano fan” into the earpiece. While whispering sweet nothings to your love ones, you can blow some tingling breeze into her ears.
I’m pretty sure you can probably think of one of your own ideas. 
[via Akihabara News]
Samsung Mobile has just launched it’s very own store front of Symbian or Windows Mobile software for Samsung cell phones. If you’re a proud owner of a Samsung mobile phone you can now easily find a mobile application for your cell phone with ease. The Samsung Mobile shop also offers downloads of freely available software for different Samsung cell phone models.
The Samsung store will not only benefit the end users. The opening of the Samsung store is also beneficial to mobile software developers creating software for Samsung cell phones. This provides them with another avenue for selling their Symbian / Windows Mobile software applications that run on a Samsung mobile phone. Checkout the Samsung Mobile Store. (via Mobile Burn)
It looks like Boy Genius’ smart radar caught a photo of an upcoming Acer mobile phone. What’s blurry besides the photo is whether the cell phone, which might be announced in the upcoming Mobile World Congress this February, is powered by Android or not. The Acer mobile phone has a sliding keyboard and … that’s about it for now on the specs I guess.
We’ll just have to wait until next week when the Mobile World Congress opens up in Barcelona, Spain. Wish we could all join Acer in the announcement plus see all the other mobile goodies just waiting to get released to the public. Want to make a bet on how many Android mobile phones will be announced at the Mobile World Congress? Anyway, here’s the photo of the rumored (for now) Acer Android mobile phone courtesy of Boy Genius Report.
This is the first mobile phone that I have read about that uses the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processor. The Toshiba TG01 in all its goodness will be encased in a thin 9.9mm body. Some of the features include HSDPA, GPS, microSD slot and of course Wifi. The TG01 cell phone sports a big 4.1 inch 800×480 pixel touchscreen display.
Toshiba has chosen to create a custom 3D GUI on top of the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS. You don’t have to wait long for photos because Pocket-Lint has some of the shared on their website. [via Engadget]
Samsung has always been breaking records these days. This time it looks like they’ll be coming out with a 12 megapixel camera phone at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Spain this February. As if it wasn’t enough, it may be that Samsung will also unveil an 8 megapixel camera phone with a 3x optical zoom.
All this talk about 8 and 12 megapixel resolutions makes me think I’m talking about plain vanilla digital cameras. Now if only Samsung would put all those DSLR firmware functionalities on those cell phones — that would really be a great unveiling. Do you agree? In the mean time, you can just drool over the “photoshopped” photo of a 12-megapixel phone courtesy of Unwired.
The Sidekick mobile phone is quite popular and has had a loyal following especially in the entertainment industry. Danger, the company behind Sidekick, was actually bought by Microsoft a while back. It looks like a new model of Sidekick LX is coming out. The sleek and thinner look feels good. A quick look at the photo shows that the new Sidekick LX has more curves especially where the keyboard meets the left and right “handle bars”.
Other welcome features include social networking apps, large screen with higher resolution. Oh and from the looks of it, it’s now finally going to have 3G (keeping fingers crossed that it will be 3.5G) and GPS. [via HipTop3]
General Mobile will be showing off a dual SIM Android cell phone at the Mobile World Congress next month. The mobile phone is said to have a 624MHz Marvell processor, 5 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, Wifi, and bluetooth. The rendered image and specs look pretty except for the lacking 3G / 3.5G capability. Plus a not too sweet 400×240 pixel display. I think mobile phones this size show at least have a 700 pixel resolution. Better make that 800. [via Android Authority]
Now that I have finished learning how to automatically detect my mobile phone as a media device I decided to experiment on how to connect it as a USB modem and connect to the Internet using 3G. I am now using Ubuntu Intrepid on my Compaq CQ20 and was a bit curious at the new support it offers for broadband connections via mobile phones.
