Archive for category Palm

Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus land on Vodafone and O2 Germany

Posted by My Cool Gadget in Palm on April 14, 2010

Vodafone and O2 in Germany will be the first to offer the webOS-based Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus in Europe. The launch date is 28 April, pricing and tariffs will be announced soon. But will the Europe crusade help Palm or will it be their final independent act?

As we wrote yesterday the smartphone pioneer Palm is up for sale. And while the rumors about HTC or Lenovo buying it are still hot, Palm’s stock price keeps growing.

It seems Palm specifically chose this particular moment to announce the European launch of Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Vodafone and O2 in Germany will be the first carriers to offer the webOS duo.

There is no pricing or tariffs information yet, but 28 April comes Palm’s second chance in Europe.

Source

,

No Comments

Google Maps 4.0 for BlackBerry available, says ‘Talk to me’

Posted by My Cool Gadget in Blackberry, Google Android, Linux, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone on April 9, 2010

Google Maps for mobile is a must-have for your phone and it keeps getting better. The latest update is for Google Maps for BlackBerry and it brings voice search, Buzz as well as other improvements too.

Search by Voice is well integrated into the Android platform, but with Google Maps 4.0 for BlackBerry this functionality becomes available on RIM handsets as well. The supported languages are English (in multiple accents) and Mandarin Chinese.

Google’s latest attempt to break into the social networking world – Google Buzz – is included in the new Google Maps for BlackBerry, too. You can view geo-tagged Buzz posts (buzzes?) and you post your own.

Another feature that made its way into Google Maps for BlackBerry is the Web History synchronization – if you’ve searched for, say, “Punch Pizza” then typing just “pun” will bring up “Punch Pizza” as a suggestion. Starred searches, items in Maps and items starred in the phone are also synchronized with your account.

Finally, there are three more interesting features – Scale Bar and Terrain layer for hiking enthusiasts, searching for businesses near an address and reporting map errors and errors in business listings.

Google Maps for BlackBerry 4.0 is available at m.google.com/maps.

Source

, ,

No Comments

Nielsen survey gauges app stores’ customer satisfaction in the US

Posted by My Cool Gadget in Blackberry, Google Android, Linux, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone on March 27, 2010

Time for another survey – this one is app store centered. It reveals some unsurprising things (the Apple App Store is on top) and surprising ones – carrier app stores are still going strong, despite everyone and their mother having a device-specific app store.

There are three charts that graph the interesting bits of this survey. Before we begin, it’s important to note that this is a survey conducted by Nielsen and it’s US only.

The first chart shows the average number of apps installed – feature phones vs. smartphones and the individual OSes head to head. Smartphones users download more than twice as many apps as feature phones users (22 – 10).

The iPhone OS comes on top, followed by Android and BlackBerry is at the bottom (company provided BlackBerries are locked so only the company’s IT can install apps).

The second chart shows the app store market share – surprisingly despite the low number of installed apps the BlackBerry App World is in second place (the huge user base helps). Carrier-operated stores are going strong too.

The third chart deals with customer satisfaction – iPhone OS is once again on top with Android almost equaling it, then come the carrier stores with above average satisfaction and at the bottom of the barrel are the BlackBerry App World and the Windows Marketplace.

Source

1 Comment

AT&T US scores Dell Aero and world’s first GSM-band Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus

Posted by My Cool Gadget in Google Android, Palm on March 23, 2010

AT&T announced today their plans to launch the Android-based Dell Aero. It will be the first Dell Droid stateside and will pack home-brewed UI – similar to those on Mini 3. In addition AT&T will expand the webOS family with the first GSM versions of Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus.

Dell Aero seems to be a re-branded Mini 3, which is currently available only in regional versions for China and Brazil.

Dell Aero is expected to run on Android v1.5 or v1.6 and sports Wi-Fi connectivity. There is no official specs sheet just yet, so we can’t confirm or deny anything else. Still you may take a look on the Mini 3iX to give you an idea what to expect though the design is definitely the one of the China-bound Dell Mini 3i.

AT&T will expand their portfolio with another two webOS smartphones – the GSM capable Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Until now both handsets were exclusively CDMA, but AT&T are the first carrier to announce their GSM siblings.

Expectedly, the Pre Plus doubles the storage of the original to 16GB and improves the overall design and keyboard. The back panel now has native compatibility with the Touchstone wireless charger, the trackball has evolved to a trackpad.

Palm Pixi Plus has similar design and functions like its predecessor and the only, but more than enough upgrade, is the Wi-Fi connectivity.

Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will become available in the upcoming months for 149.99 and 49.99 US dollars respectively after mail rebate and on two-year contract.

Source

, , ,

No Comments

US smartphone market study predicts a good year for Android

Posted by My Cool Gadget in Blackberry, Google Android, Java, Linux, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone on March 20, 2010

They say you shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch, but according to a market survey Android has laid a lot of eggs in North America. The total number of smartphone shipments will rise by 38% compared to last year for a total of 65.1 million units.

Here’s the breakdown – RIM is still king of the hill with 43% estimated market share for 2010. They lose 6.2% market share but due to the increase in total smartphones shipped, they will still get a 5.8 million increase in units shipped.

Apple comes in second on the smartphne market, and similarly to BlackBerry, it’s to expect a decrease in market share but a modes increase in units shipped.

BlackBerry OS, Apple OS and Android OS combined account for a total of 80% of the total smartphone market in the US (sorry, Microsoft).

Android is predicted to have an explosive growth, putting it a close third behind Apple’s OS – 18.9% market share compared to last year’s 9.7%. That’s nearly a double.

The number of Android smartphones shipped will be 12.3 million, compared to Apple’s 13.8 million. Of course, many manufacturers are offering Android phones and only Apple sells iPhone’s but still – it’s a commendable achievement for the OS nonetheless.

If these numbers pan out, the number of Android phones sold will be more than that of Microsoft, Palm and Symbian combined (again, this is about North America only, not the whole world). The Microsoft OS is also the only one expected to have negative growth in sales (and we can see why).

The survey also mentions the increased strain the increasing number smartphones will put on mobile networks. This will push vendors to make phones more efficient in their data usage – a field in which BlackBerry is apparently the leader.

The situation in South America is a little different – the market has declined by 11% last year, but is expected to bounce back. Symbian was the leading OS (42%) followed by RIM (28%).

We can feel the Android wave sweeping our office too. We’ve been on an Android diet for almost a month now, and we have a few more Android phone reviews in the pipeline as well. So the review portion of our homepage is bound to get all Androidish quite soon.

Source

No Comments