Virtual keypads set to grace Android phones

Ever since Apple’s iPhone hit the market, some people have loved using a virtual keypad. Others have hated it.

Owners of Google’s new G1 Android phones could soon have a choice to use either the existing slide-out QWERTY keyboard or a virtual keyboard like the iPhone’s.

Google has added “soft keyboards” to its road map of future software releases. The new software hook is expected to be available for phone manufacturers as part of the source code in the first three months of 2009.

While there are many features to love about the G1, which is the first Android phone to hit the market, there are several items missing. A virtual keypad is one of them.

Without the touchscreen keypad, people have to slide out the QWERTY keypad to send text messages, IMs, and e-mail.

Love the Android G1? You can get the G2, too

As a tribute to the newly released Android G1 phone that runs on a Linux-based operating system, the folks at gOS, maker of gOS 3 Gadgets, decided this week to hand-build an Android G2 PC.

(Credit: gOS)This custom-built desktop computer is designed in the image of a new “Android.” The G2 PC is based on the Via C7-based Nano-ITX board, and comes with an 800MHz processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and 80GB of hard disk storage space. This is not much of a supercomputer, but it’s powerful enough that you can do multiple tasks.

As Google’s Android G1 is set to introduce cell phone users to all the mobile aspects of Linux, gOS hopes the Android G2 PC will bring the same excitement to households.

And, whose lucky household will it be? It could be yours. The company is auctioning off this special desktop PC on eBay. All proceeds will be donated to DonorsChoose.org via the TechCrunch Challenge.

DonorsChoose.org aims to provide students with the books, technology, and supplies they need. It’s the kind of organization that could always use some more funding.

At the time of this writing, the bid for the computer was at $280. Now, that’s not much funding at all.

AT&T iPhone Wi-Fi free as in money, but not as in time

I finally got the SMS alert on my iPhone telling me that I now have access to the Wi-Fi hot spots at Starbucks, for free. Cool. But the images I had of just sauntering in to a Starbucks, selecting the local Wi-Fi network and jumping on the Internet were busted when I read these ridiculous instructions for getting access:

Activate Wi-Fi from the settings icon on your iPhone.
Select “attwifi” from the list of available networks.
Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap ‘continue.’
You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hot spot. You will not be charged for the text message.
The SMS link will only be valid for 24 hours at the location it was requested. Another request must be submitted when using another hot spot location.
Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hot spot.
To get on Wi-Fi, I need to tell you my phone number and then authorize over SMS? That’s just goofy. I get that the method that I think should work to authorize an iPhone on the network–a check of the phone’s MAC address by the AT&T Wi-Fi authorization system–might be more hackable than this closed-loop authorization system that checks to see if you’re an AT&T iPhone subscriber in good standing via your phone number. But so what? It’s not like the value of the network connection that someone would be appropriating if they hacked this system is that high to begin with.

Adding this “hoop jumpage” (as our writer Stephen Shankland calls it) just punishes the rest of us who only want to do a quick check of a Web site or map, thank you very much. It appears that for anything less than a long Web browsing session, we’d be better off just living with the cellular data coming into our phones.

iPhone sales buoy AT&T earnings

AT&T’s profits were up slightly in the third quarter, thanks in large part to the popularity of the Apple iPhone 3G.

The nation’s largest phone company announced on Wednesday a 5.5 percent boost in profits for the third quarter. Net income for the company increased to $3.2 billion on sales of $31.2 billion, which were up about 4 percent, compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Wireless, which accounts for about 40 percent of AT&T’s total revenue, once again saved the day for AT&T, proving that it continues to be a cash cow, even as the economy slumps. Profits for wireless services surged 21 percent on revenue that was up 15 percent on the quarter.

The big driver for wireless during the quarter was Apple’s latest iPhone, which went on sale in July. AT&T is the only cell phone operator in the United States to offer the iPhone. And the exclusive deal to sell the hot phone is paying off for the company. AT&T reported that it activated 2.4 million iPhones during the third quarter, with about 40 percent of those going to new subscribers.

It should come as little surprise that the iPhone 3G would help boost profits for AT&T. The phone company’s decision to sell the phone for a subsidized price of $199 has likely helped boost sales. The previous version of the phone was not subsidized, initially costing AT&T customers $499. The higher-end version cost $599.

AT&T is making up for any losses from the phone subsidy by forcing customers to sign a two-year service contract on a service that costs much more than the average AT&T cell phone service. The strategy seems to be working. Despite the hefty service fee, consumers are still flocking to the iPhone.

On Tuesday Apple reported that it sold 6.9 million iPhone 3Gs during the quarter, which was far more than analysts had been anticipating and more than the total number of original iPhones sold in a year.

In total, AT&T added 2 million net wireless subscribers, which is an increase of 2.7 percent.

And in general, customers seem satisfied with their service. AT&T’s churn rate, or the rate at which its customers ditch its service for another service, improved to 1.2 percent from 1.3 percent.

Despite strength in its wireless business, AT&T is still facing major challenges on the wireline side. In the past, the conventional wisdom was that phone companies were immune to economic downturns. The idea was that people always need a home phone.

But that thinking is changing, as consumers have more choices for communication than ever before. Cable operators also offer voice services as part of competitively priced service bundles. And then there are people who simply cut the cord and use their cell phones.

Roughly 17 percent of households in the United States, or more than 20 million customers, are getting rid of their old wireline phones and using their cell phones instead, according to market researcher Nielsen Media. The trend will likely continue, as one in five U.S. households is expected to be wireless-only by the end of 2008, according to Nielsen.

This helps explain why AT&T lost 990,000 primary phone lines during the quarter, which helped drag total revenue for AT&T’s wireline business down 2.2 percent, to $17.6 billion.

Clearly, wireless revenue, which now accounts for 40 percent of AT&T’s total revenue, is helping keep the company in good standing. But AT&T has also been trying to augment its wireline losses with investment in other land-based services, such as broadband. The company has committed to spending $7 billion on extending its fiber network to build its new U-verse service. U-verse allows AT&T to sell a triple play bundle of services that includes telephony, broadband and television to compete against the cable companies.

Overall broadband sales were up for AT&T, but it wasn’t enough to offset the losses of the traditional landline services. Even though AT&T’s U-Verse product has gotten high marks from consumers, it is still available only to a small portion of AT&T’s customer base. Rollout of the service has been slow. And this will likely hurt the company over the long run. But deploying more fiber, and getting the services up and running, is no easy task.

With the holiday buying season approaching, AT&T is no doubt hoping that iPhone sales will remain strong. But given the state of the economy, experts are predicting slow sales for all consumer electronics. This week, the Consumer Electronics Association said it expects holiday electronics sales to grow only by about 3.5 percent in 2008, much lower than in previous years.

Final Fantasy Coming to iPhone

Famitsu reported this week that Square Enix is developing its first game for iPhone. ‘Crystal Defenders’ is based in the Final Fantasy universe and is dubbed as a defense simulation, so look for something along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics meets Tower defense.

スクウェア・エニックスは2008年10月30日、iPhoneおよびiPod touch向けゲームの参入第1弾タイトルとして、『クリスタル・ディフェンダーズ』を2008年度今冬に配信予定であると発表した。価格は未定。

『クリスタル・ディフェンダーズ』は、マップの形状や敵の属性などに合わせてキャラクターを配置して、迫りくる敵たちを効率よく倒すことが目的の“ディフェンス シミュレーション”ゲーム。ステージ毎に変化するマップの形状、敵の属性に合わせた戦力の投入が必要で、高い戦略性を求められる作品となっている。操作はiPhone、iPod touch のタッチパネルをいかしたものとなっており、誰でも簡単かつ直感的にキャラクター配置が可能だ。

▲プレイヤーが配置するキャラクターたちは、『ファイナルファンタジータクティクス』シリーズに登場するジョブ（職業）となっている。

Software unlock for iPhone 3G coming soon?

An unlocked iPhone 3G is a little closer to becoming reality, according to the iPhone Dev Team.

An easy way of unlocking your iPhone 3G could hit the Internet relatively soon.

(Credit: CNET)Gizmodo picked up on a video produced by the iPhone Dev Team demonstrating that it has gained access to the baseband processor used by Apple in the iPhone 3G. The baseband chip is what controls the connection between the phone and the mobile phone network, meaning that a software download that could let you use your iPhone 3G on a carrier network other than the ones officially designated by Apple could be released soon.

I’m sure you remember the fuss about the original iPhone and those who sought to unlock it from the four carriers that were Apple’s launch partners for the first iPhone. The iPhone 3G has proven a tougher nut to crack, because Apple apparently changed the baseband to make it more difficult to exploit than the baseband used on the original iPhone. You can unlock your iPhone 3G to use it on another carrier by modifying the SIM card, but what the iPhone Dev Team is trying to accomplish is a software-based unlock that you would just download and install.

There hasn’t been as much demand for unlocked iPhone 3Gs, given the much greater distribution of that phone around the world. However, there are still some countries, like China, that don’t carry the iPhone, and there are still some users who want to use their iPhones on a different carrier than the one designated for the iPhone in their country.

iSkin fuze released for the iPhone

iSkin has released the iSkin fuze, a new protective case for the iPhone 3G that will retail for $44.99.

The fuze utilizes dual-layers, with screen and port protection. It gets its name from a tough outer shell made from polycarbonate, paired with a soft inner layer made of rubber to keep your iPhone from getting scratched.

Locate the cheapest fuel around with your iPhone

OPIS or Oil Price Information Service recently announced that they have a new service that would work on Apple Inc.’s iPhone. The application called iGas will help gas consumers to know where they could buy the cheapest fuel in the country.

According to Michael Sinsky, the CIO of OPIS, the platform from Apple Inc. has changed the game for all the consumers when it comes to shopping or bargaining for the best prices on services as well as goods. That is why they have rendered the iGas to the public.
The iPhone users who want to have their tanks filled-up would simply touch the icon of the iGas in theirdevice so that the GPS system of the iPhone will locate their current position. After a few seconds, the application will give at leat 10 results on where they could find the gasoline stations that has the cheapest prices near their area. The prices were displayed from the cheapest to the highest price. It also has the brand and the address of the station as well.
Fred Rozell said that iGas and the iPhone is the perfect epitome of the data and technology marriage which would allow the users to gain control about their fuel expenses. Rozell is OPIS’s Director of Retail Pricing.
iGas can be downloaded from the app store.

Classics brings the joy of books to the iPhone

A new application called Classics has been released for the iPhone that brings some “realism” to reading books on the iPhone.

Classics features animated page turning and sounds, so you get the feeling of actually reading a book (a small thing, but important for the experience). Swiping your finger to left advances the page and going right turns the page back. The interface also includes a home button and a button to list the chapters of book as well.

and exit the application, a visual bookmark is placed on the page where you stopped, allowing you to easily pick up again at your leisure. This is one those distinctly luxury type apps that you don’t really need, but is a nice complimentary app if you can afford it.

It includes great classic books like Huckleberry Finn, Call of the Wild, Robinson Crusoe and more.

Classics is available from the App Store and will retail for $2.99, and is available for download immediately.

The T-Mobile G1 ‘Google Phone’ is a tweaker’s delight

At first glance, the T-Mobile G1 (US$179) doesn’t seem to merit much attention. It looks like just another bland, HTC-manufactured phone. But use the G1–the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system — for 5 minutes, and you’ll start to see why it’s one of the best-designed phones you can buy. Not only is the G1 intuitive to use, but its customization options (via Android) makes it a tweaker’s delight.

Setup

From the start, the G1 offers a different, more intuitive smart-phone experience. At boot-up, the phone displays a cartoon graphic of an android, with an animated finger pointing at the android and instructions to “touch the android to begin.”

The ensuing screens are clearly presented, and walk you through the speedy setup process. You’ll need a Google account, the phone explains, for automatic syncing of your contacts, calendar, and e-mail with your Web-based Google data.

If you don’t already have an account, you can sign up directly from the phone. Otherwise, sign in to link your existing Google account and the phone. After the initial, over-the-air synchronization finished, my Google e-mail and calendar info was available to me on the phone, and the phone was ready for use.

Design

The phone itself has a candybar design with a matte black finish and slightly rubberized plastic back. It’s narrower than its chief rival, Apple’s iPhone, but slightly thicker (the G1 measures 4.6 inches by 2.2 inches by 0.6 inch, and weighs 5.6 ounces). The 3.2-inch capacitive touch-screen display dominates the front face of the phone; the physical buttons on the phone are well chosen and clearly labeled.

The lower fifth of the phone holds an easy-glide trackball (similar to the trackball found on RIM BlackBerry devices) and five buttons: a green talk button to activate the phone itself; a home button to return you to home screen; a back button to move to the previously viewed screen in the browser and throughout the phone; a red end button; and a rectangular, context-sensitive menu button. This last button is conveniently situated beneath the screen (double press the button to quickly release the screen lock; hold it down for a couple of seconds to get a shortcut screen to recently used applications) and directly above the trackball.

A full QWERTY keyboard hides beneath display; when you press the middle left part of the phone, the display smoothly slides up. At the same time, the phone automatically rotates the screen’s orientation from vertical to horizontal; you have to use the horizontal orientation for data entry tasks, as the phone lacks an on-screen keyboard (unlike the Apple iPhone 3G or the RIM BlackBerry Storm).

The roomy backlit keyboard made typing easy, though the buttons felt a bit too flat for my comfort (because the flat buttons butt up against the rim of the phone, pressing the bottom row of buttons was sometimes difficult; the same issue arose with the buttons at the far right). My right thumb had to work harder than my left because, in effect, the keyboard was deeply inset (my thumb had to reach around and over the bottom fifth of the phone to reach it).

The only other physical buttons on the phone are a volume rocker switch on the upper left side, and a dedicated camera shutter button on the right side. A microSD Card slot is hidden on the left of the phone; to access it, you open the screen and press a subtle tab; the card then pops out of the side (warning: you’ll need fingernails to get it to pop out easily). T-Mobile includes a 1GB card; the device has been tested with up to 8GB microSD Cards, and should support 16GB cards when available.

The rear cover pops off to reveal the unit’s battery and SIM card. Because (like other HTC-designed handsets) the phone lacks a standard dedicated headphone jack, you have to use the included wired stereo headset, which plugs into the proprietary jack at the phone’s base–the same jack that the charger plugs into. T-Mobile plans to offer a converter at extra cost, but the dongle approach seems as bothersome and inelegant as the original Apple iPhone’s nonstandard headphone jack was. It’s too bad, because the phone is certainly a capable media player.

Phone Use

The phone feels good in the hand, and it sounded great when I tested it. I received both 3G and EDGE network coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area; audio was clear, with no background noise or hiss.

In the PC World Test Center, the battery lasted for 5 hours, 51 minutes of continuous talk time–23 minutes longer than the iPhone 3G. In my hands-on use, the battery drained a bit faster than I had expected, though: After an hour of use (including phone calls, and music and application downloads), the battery had drained by 31 percent.

The Dialer application is simple to use. The on-screen buttons are well-spaced, and I had no difficulty using the app one-handed. Unlike with the iPhone 3G, I didn’t accidentally trigger buttons by running my finger over the screen. I particularly liked the streamlined process for entering contact data, and the freedom I had to customize a contact’s info to match the fields I wanted to fill. The Voice Dialer worked well when I tried it in a quiet environment.

Hardware and Software Integration: As with Apple’s iPhone and its software, the integration of the G1’s hardware with the Android software is crucial. Here, both the phone and Android shine: Thanks to its trackball and its slide-and-glide gesture-capable touch screen, the G1 had particularly intuitive and smooth ergonomics. Displays behaved as my fingers seemed to expect them to–except that I couldn’t swipe left-to-right to scroll through pictures in my photo library, as I could with an iPhone 3G. The touch screen was usually highly responsive, but sometimes when I’d touch a hypertext link in the browser, I had to press twice for it to take. I liked being able to use my finger to drag open the Notifications status to see additional details about incoming text, instant, voice, and e-mail messages; and calendar events.

As the first Android device, the G1 teems with potential, and exploring the new interface is fun. Google’s own clean, simple Web design has clearly informed much of Android’s interface–and how you interact with the applications. You can tweak and customize everything, either through the deep and varied Settings options or through suitable apps.

The opening home screen consists of a myFaves icon at the upper left, an analog clock icon in the middle, and four primary applications: Dialer (also known as the phone), contacts, browser, and maps. Hold your finger down on an app, and the phone will vibrate once and release the icon so that you can move it to another spot on the screen.

Swipe your finger to the right, and the wallpaper continues onto a second home screen, with a Google search bar permanently fixed at its top. Press or drag the tab at the bottom of the screen (in vertical orientation; in horizontal orientation, the tab shows at right) to reveal the other applications. The icons, arrayed in rows of four, will include all of your applications. Apps are arranged alphabetically; the icons are smaller and slightly less distinctive than on the Apple iPhone, but they’re comparable to what you’d see on a Palm OS or BlackBerry OS device. Hold your finger down on an icon to duplicate the icon on the home screen.

The phone has both assisted GPS and GPS. The Google Maps app built-in uses both, but in my casual tests in San Francisco, it didn’t exhibit the same level of accuracy in picking up my location as an iPhone 3G’s Google Maps app did.

At launch, the G1 doesn’t support the stereo Bluetooth profile, according to T-Mobile; however, the phone may support stereo Bluetooth at some future time.

Applications: The phone comes with a number of apps preinstalled–and you can add tons more via the Android Market. The versatile IM lets you configure instant messaging with AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. Because Android permits multitasking–and no app actually closes–you can receive IMs after you’ve left the IM app to browse the Web, for example. (With the iPhone, you won’t get your messages if you leave the IM app, and you have to log in again each time.)

Mail from Gmail gets its own icon, but you can set up other POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts as well, in just a couple of steps (the software automatically configures the server settings). The calendar syncs with your Google Calendar. I had no trouble viewing the various calendar entries I’m privy to, or adding an entry to my calendar, but I couldn’t add an entry to other Google Calendars that I have rights to. And bizarrely, Android has no Google Docs support at launch; the only way you can access Google Docs is through the Web browser–a bit of a pain. You can view Microsoft Word and Excel documents through Gmail, but you can’t save and view these docs through the Web browser. Similarly, you can open and read PDF files received through Gmail.

The Web browser handled much of what I threw at it, but it balked at some tasks (for example, it lacks in-browser Flash support). I missed having discrete forward and backward controls (you can go back only by clicking the universal hardware back button) and an option for offline viewing (as on a Palm OS-based Treo), but adding and retrieving bookmarks was simple.

Multimedia

The Amazon MP3 app is a useful alternative to iTunes, and music downloaded quickly and easily. I could queue up the DRM-free tracks for download, which occurred in the background as I did other things with the phone. Unfortunately, the selection is less extensive than the one on iTunes.

The music player application is easy to navigate, and great for finding and playing back music. Music sounded okay when piped through the built-in speaker (on a par with the iPhone 3G’s speaker). But the lack of a standard headphone jack limits the G1’s potential as a music player.

The camera app is a big disappointment. Though the device has a 3-megapixel camera, it lacks a flash, a zoom, and any controls for adjust image quality, white balance, or the like. There’s no camcorder, either, though T-Mobile says that the imaging sensor can capture video if someone writes a video capture app and offers it on the Android Market.

Final Analysis

T-Mobile’s Android-based G1 isn’t especially sexy or eye-catching, but it does a lot of things right. It’s a strong first-generation Android device, but the absence of a standard headphone jack, a video camera, and Google Docs (and support for Word and Excel) at launch are notable detractions. Still, I would recommend this versatile phone over countless other smart-phones; Android’s intuitive ease-of-use raises this phone above most Windows Mobile- and BlackBerry-based devices.

T-Mobile G1 Google phone Users Guide Video

The all new T-Mobile G1 Google phone is available as of tomorrow and we know T-Mobile stores in the states will be packed solid.

Yes like the iPhone 3G release all O2 stores in the UK was jam-packed, October 22, Wednesday will be a busy day in the U.S and October 31st will be busy for us in the UK.

Anyway below we have a video for you to watch called the T-Mobile G1 Google phone Users Guide, pretty nice video to watch and gives you the basics of how the phone works, right I will shut up now and let you watch the video for yourself. Please do post your comments.

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