GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

LAS VEGAS — After weeks of leaked promo materials and screen shots, Sprint has introduced the EVO Shift, HTC’s latest carrier-exclusive 4G smartphone.

The phone is scheduled to be widely available to consumers on the last day of CES, January 9th.

As Sprint’s press release states, the EVO Shift follows in the speedy 4G footsteps of its mammoth-sized EVO predecessor, but comes in a smaller, tighter package. Highlights include a 3.6 inch capacitive-touch screen display, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, 5-megapixel back-facing camera, 720p HD camcorder and microSD slot for upgradable storage up to 32GB.The phone can also serve as a mobile hotspot, tethering up to eight wireless devices.

For the crowd that wants more power and more features from their phone, however, the EVO Shift may be lacking. The phone ships with Android 2.2. (Froyo, not the most recent version, Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread). It lacks a front facing camera, which means no video chatting either. The 5-megapixel back facing cameras is downgraded from the EVO’s 8 megapixels. The EVO has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, while the Shift clocks in at 800 Mhz. Those that want larger screens like the former EVO (4.3 inches) may not be satisfied with the EVO Shift’s 3.6 inches.

Comparing the EVO Shift to the older, bigger EVO, the question comes down to this: Are you willing to sacrifice screen size, processor speed and other niceties for a slide out keyboard and easier pocketability?

The EVO Shift retails at $150 after a $100 mail-in rebate (with a two-year service contract).

See Also:

• HTC EVO 4G $200, on Sale June 4
• Storage Bug Hits HTC Evo 4G Phone Just Before Launch
• Wired Video: HTC Evo 4G Dissected

Photo courtesy Sprint

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The easiest way to stop an argument is to contest the meaning of words. That’s what debate coaches teach, and it’s what lawyers, philosophers and clever toddlers do every day. It’s also what Mark Zuckerberg did last week when he was asked about developing an app for iPad at the company’s “Facebook Mobile” event.

“The iPad’s not mobile,” Zuckerberg retorted. “Next question.” When the crowd murmured, he added, “It’s not mobile! It’s a computer. It’s like a different thing.”

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” said Mashable’s Ben Parr. “Well, sorry,” Zuckerberg responded.

A moment later, he walked it back: “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be rude towards Apple there. I mean, look, we all love Apple products here, and we want to work with them, and all that; I just want to keep the event focused on what we’re doing today. I think that the iPad is not a mobile platform in the way that a phone is, and that’s what we’re talking about today.”

I’m left wondering whether the perceived rudeness (towards Apple, not the reporter) wasn’t about Zuckerberg not answering the question, but about him refusing to call the iPad mobile and calling it a computer instead.

In the tech world, there are plenty of perfectly ordinary descriptive words that also function as insults: “netbook” (applied to a lightweight notebook), “feature phone” (applied to an entry-level smartphone), “cable company” (trust me, fiberoptic IPTV companies do not like being called that).

You can also cut someone down by denying something a label. “Open-source” is a good example, but I’ve got a more surprising one. When Barnes & Noble unveiled Nook Color, I was surprised to see how many commenters at Wired.com were absolutely certain that (as jaxruffian66 put it) “No e-ink=not a reader. End of story.” I had no idea that we’d already completely defined what an e-reader was, based on the presence or absence of one specific technology. I don’t quite know what we’ll do when Pixel Qi, Mirasol and color E Ink screens show up.

Is “mobile” like this? Is being a mobile device inherently something good, so that not being inside that clique is something bad? What exactly was wrong with the word “portable” for tablets and laptops? (Netbooks used to be called “ultraportable”; now, you’re more likely to hear them called “ultramobile.”) Is there any consensus about what does and doesn’t constitute a mobile device? Or even whether it necessarily refers to a hardware device and not a platform?

One irony of Zuckerberg’s statement is that “computer” usually is used as an approbation, not an insult. Tablets like the iPad aren’t “real” computers because (the argument goes) they don’t have keyboards — or don’t allow users to access the filesystem, or whatever line you want to draw.

The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal wonders whether the presence or absence of a keyboard still defines what we think of as a computer, or at least a PC. That term, too, is changing: It very rarely means a specific platform anymore, Windows instead of Mac or Linux, but instead a personal computer (including those running Mac OS X or Linux) rather than a tablet or smartphone.

Or consider “social network.” This could be entirely offline: just a set of people and their relationships to each other. Then it became synonymous with dedicated sites that provided online social networking, then activities of people using those sites. Eventually it migrated to “social networking features” of other websites, services and objects, and finally just became “social”: like “mobile,” an entire field of activity, including both hardware and software, commerce and anthropology.

Like “mobile,” “social” is good. Social is where everything is headed; it’s the future. Nobody wants to be left out of the future.

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A peek into Nokia’s research labs reveals some intriguing possibilities on how we will interact with our devices in the future.

Phones could be embedded with chips that can help them “smell,” electronically stretchable skins could change the shape of devices and make them fit like gloves on your hand, and gestures could mean the end of peck and hunt on mobile displays.

Some future touchscreen displays might even give you tactile feedback — via tiny electrical shocks.

So while Nokia may be a bit behind the curve in developing touchscreen interfaces, its R&D department is not standing still.

Check out the five big ideas that are currently under development at Nokia’s labs.

Photo: (Andrea Vascellari/Flickr)

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It hasn’t been smooth sailing for MeeGo, Intel and Nokia’s combined effort to develop a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. A key executive departure and news that smartphones running the operating system won’t be available until sometime next year has left Intel and Nokia fighting to stay on course.

“The community around MeeGo is very strong,” Suzy Ramirez, an Intel spokesperson told Wired.com. “We are on schedule and MeeGo will be available for TVs and in-car entertainment systems soon, and other devices next year.”

MeeGo hashad a tough week. On Tuesday, Ari Jaaksi, the vice-president of Nokia’s MeeGo division, confirmed he will leave the company for “personal reasons.” Last month, Nokia went through a change of guard when CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo stepped down to be replaced by former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop.

A Nokia spokesperson has said the company’s MeeGo roadmap remains unchanged.

Meanwhile, Intel vice-president Doug Fisher told Forbes that the company expects to show the first smartphones running MeeGo operating systems early next year and have them in hands of consumers by mid-2011.

“All this has added confusion to MeeGo’s prospects, especially given the tremendous stride being made by alternative operating systems such as Android and iOS,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst with research and consulting firm Current Analysis. “Given the management changes at Nokia and the possibility that MeeGo phones could be delayed, it leaves question marks about the future of MeeGo.”

Over the last three years, the rise of smartphones and the growing popularity of tablets and streaming media players has opened the doors for new operating systems that can promise a better user experience. For instance, Android, which launched in 2008 for smartphones, has now spread to tablets and has even birthed Google TV, a platform that combines cable TV programming with sites from the internet.

MeeGo hopes to do something similar. But it started small. Last year Intel started a project called Moblin that would be a Linux-based operating system designed specifically for netbooks. Separately, Nokia had been working on a Linux-based software platform called Maemo for smartphones and tablets.

At the Mobile World Congress conference in February this year, the two companies decided to combine efforts and spawn a new OS called MeeGo. MeeGo is now hosted by the Linux Foundation and has expanded its reach to phones, tablets, TVs and even in-car entertainment systems.

Both companies desperately want to control a next-generation mobile OS. Nokia has heavily relied on Symbian, which enjoys massive popularity worldwide but is saddled with an archaic, needlessly complicated interface that hasn’t adapted well to the world of touchscreen phones. And Intel has seen success supplying its Atom chips to the netbook market, but hasn’t made significant inroads into smartphones; it’s hoping that an OS might help it leverage its chip business into a new market.

In the next few weeks, Intel plans to release a version of the nascent OS so developers can start creating the user interface required to put MeeGo on different devices. MeeGo with an Intel-developed skin is expected after that. MeeGo will have its first developers’ conference in Ireland in November.

“From a product perspective, we expect to show smartphones and tablets on MeeGo in mid-2011,” says Ramirez.

But Greengart isn’t convinced that plans for MeeGo won’t change again. Intel is dependent on Nokia to deliver the hardware that will bring MeeGo to consumers and Nokia’s big management changes could affect MeeGo’s future, he says.

So far, Nokia has said that it plans to use the Symbian OS for low and mid-level smartphones and build MeeGo into high-end devices that are more focused on computing.

“The problem is that Nokia executives, including the CEO who talked about this strategy just a week or two ago, are not there. And who knows what’s going in the company,” says Greengart. “The future of MeeGo depends on how much Nokia and Intel are willing to stick to their plans in a fast-changing world.”

Photo: MeeGo Phone browser (Steve Paine/Flickr)

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Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal has a clever Dropbox-based solution for printing documents from a smartphone or tablet, whether your printer’s down the hall or thousands of miles away.

The idea is so simple, you’ll be amazed you haven’t thought to try it yourself. Dropbox is a popular utility that allows users to sync and share files on different computers. Most smartphones have built-in Dropbox applications, and many mobile applications are now integrating Dropbox for remote syncing and storage. You can also add files to your Dropbox account via email or the web.

In this solution, use any of those means to get the file you want printed into a shared Dropbox folder — call it “PrintQueue” — that you’ve set up for this purpose. Your print-capable computer uses a script to monitor “PrintQueue”, automatically print its documents and then move them to a different folder. (Agarwal calls this second folder “logs”; I’d call it “Completed Jobs”). If you’re a clever hacker, you could even add scripts to send a remote notification that the print job has been completed.

For Windows, Agarwal has a downloadable VBS script that will set this up for you; as he notes, there are different scripting solutions for Mac OS X or Linux too.

Once you’ve got this rigged, the immediate use case is to send a document wirelessly from a smartphone or tablet to a local printer. And it is kind of magical to stand there and watch the whole process unfold, as in the video above.

But think beyond that. Suddenly, your printer is capable of networking with any computer, anywhere — with any phone, anywhere — that you approve and authorize. This is potentially so much better than hooking up a computer to a wireless router or navigating the virtual bureaucracy of an office printer network. It’s way better than a fax machine.

This could be one future of social networking and file sharing: instead of big, ad-cluttered feeds that push photos, status updates and Farmville notifications or anonymous networks that chop files into bits and reassemble them, imagine friends and acquaintances broadcasting to each other, wheels within wheels, each with different levels and fields of access. Designating someone a “friend” might not be worth very much in this cockeyed world, but automatic remote access to someone’s printer still means something.

Print Files from any Mobile Phone using Dropbox [Digital Inspiration] via Gizmodo

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Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Android phone owners are in for some bad news. The company has delayed the rollout of the upgrade to Android 2.1 version of the operating system for Xperia phones in the U.S.

Instead of updating existing devices–the Xperia X10, Xperia X10 mini and Xperia X10 mini pro–to Android 2.1 at the end of September, Xperia owners will get new features added at the end of October and onwards.

“We are, of course, not happy about the change of launch timing but we have had to spend some additional time on the software to really makes sure we roll-out with the right quality and user experience,” says Sony Ericsson on its product blog.

The move is yet another example of how Sony Ericsson’s Android plans have been plagued by delays.

Despite the beautiful hardware Sony Ericsson’s phones have never enjoyed the same level of popularity in the U.S. as the company’s rivals. Last year, Sony Ericsson turned to Android in the hope that it would more effectively compete in the smartphones market. But it has been slow to bring Android devices to market.

Sony Ericsson worked for months on creating a skin for Android called UXP. The UXP skin brought in features such as Timescape that collects social networking feeds and presents them in a card-like view. It added a recommendation engine for music and a widget to access photos and video.

Though it was attractive, the user interface significantly delayed Sony Ericsson’s launch of Android phones. In August, the Xperia X10 debuted on the AT&T network for $150 with a two-year contract. The Xperia X10 launched with version 1.6 of the Android OS, as did the X10 mini and X10 mini pro.

Clearly, that version of the OS is extremely outdated and Sony Ericsson is trying to fix it with its latest update.

With its upcoming rollout, the company plans to offer Xperia users features such as HD video recording with continuous auto-focus, five homescreens for apps, widgets, shortcuts and folders and social phonebook that automatically syncs contact pictures from Facebook and shows when your friends are online.

Almost all of these features are already standard on most Android phones.

Sony Ericsson is struggling to catch up and along the way, Xperia users are finding themselves without the most current software and features. Even with the upcoming update, Xperia users won’t be on the latest Android platform. Current Xperia models are unlikely to see Android 2.2 Froyo for a very long time.

Photo: Priya Ganapati/Wired.com

[via Unwired View]

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Alternate MS Office icons by talwayseb, via CrystalXP.net

Microsoft is a giant company working in many different fields, but in the consumer market, apart from XBox, it does one thing really well: software. After some high-profile, quickly-aborted misadventures in mobile, that’s what it’s going to focus on from now on.

Microsoft’s Tivanka Ellawala told the WSJ that the company’s done with smartphone hardware (beyond in-house prototypes, presumably): We are in the software business and that is where our business will be focused,” he said. That means no follow-ups to the Kin social media smartphone, definitely; no resuscitation of the Courier e-reader/tablet project, probably; and a new focus on making apps for other platforms, quite possibly.

What kinds of platforms? I don’t know — how about the iPad?

On Wednesday, Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott confirmed the rumors on Twitter: “Shhh…. It’s true: Microsoft is working on iPad apps.” Makes perfect sense to me:

• Microsoft was never fully behind smartphone/tablet hardware;
• Its mobile OS is battling stiff competition on all sides;
• They’ve always been a multi-platform company;
• And, um, they’ve already got apps on the iPhone. (Bing. For now.)

So besides search, what are we talking about here? Microsoft Office? (Which, remember, includes a LOT of apps, not just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.) Games? Messenger? Frontend clients for Windows Live? Specialized applications for enterprise clients? Virtual PC, to mix it up with VMWare’s anticipated virtualization apps? No one knows.

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Much to newspapers’ chagrin, these days everyone advertises and looks for work online. But how do you find work if you can’t read? Here, the new generation of touchscreen computers is light-years ahead of newsprint.

That’s the premise of Indian jobs site Babajob.com, with help from Microsoft Research’s ethnographic UI expert Indrani Medhi.

Besides the informal labor market, Medhi has also deployed and studied the use of text-free interfaces in mapping, mobile banking, and disseminating health information. Since many parts of the developing world are adopting mobile phones without books or traditional PCs, the implications of widespread text-free mobile computing applications are tremendous.

Medhi’s research is not just technological but anthropological, as the “ethnographic UI” phrase implies. Speech, for instance, is preferred over multimedia/video by her study subjects. The presence or absence of computing devices in the home has class implications. Medhi writes that her team is “also trying to understand characteristics of the cognitive styles of those with little formal education and their implications for UI design for this population.” Hindi, for instance, is like English read from left to right. It’s natural for us to arrange pictures from left to right to show chronology or causality. It’s not necessarily intuitive to a nonreader.

The demo video above of Babajobs’ text-free interface is in Hindi, without subtitles, but it’s not hard to make out what’s happening. (If you want to skip to the site in action, go to 2:50.) A middle-class couple is looking for domestic help. Meanwhile, one woman convinces another (who can’t read) that she can use a computer to find work. At the end, they find each other. Such a simple, happy story is easy to understand without letters or language.

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Image from DataViz.com.

With its flagship mobile office suite Documents To Go, software company DataViz makes some of the most popular productivity applications for Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Windows, Mobile, and Android. Now that RIM has bought the better chunk of DataViz to work for Blackberry, its days as a cross-platform mobile superstar might be numbered.

The deal had been reported as done on Friday by Crackberry.com, reportedly for $50m in cash, shortly after DataViz had announced that they were cancelling development for Palm. RIM confirmed the acquisition yesterday in a statement: “RIM has acquired some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform.” Translation: it’s all ours, now.

Even if RIM just lets its client apps for other platforms drift along for a while, they’re still a good business: as CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt points out, “fifteen dollars a pop for iPhone business professionals buying Documents To Go for iPhone isn’t a business to quickly pull from.”

Still, having Documents To Go in-house offers RIM terrific leverage. They can use its InTact cloud-syncing software for all media files on the Blackberry; offer the premium version for free to enterprise customers; and package a new suite of productivity and enterprise apps for its forthcoming BlackPad tablet. By buying Documents To Go and its software team from DataViz, RIM just solidified its position as the “serious” and “productive” smartphone company.

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Afghanistan’s vibrant cellphone ecosystem is one of the country’s economic bright spots. There are about 12.5 million cellular subscriptions in the country of 27 million people.

Jan Chipchase, executive creative director at Frog Design spent some time in Afghanistan recently for a research study on mobile banking.

In Afghanistan most cell phone users have pre-paid mobile accounts but not ATM cards (only 3% of the country has bank accounts) so mobile banking willtake the form of SIM cards that are pre-loaded with credit and distributed to resellers. But that presents some major challenges. In most other countries, transporting the SIM cards and securing them would be a simple matter. That’s not the case in an war-torn environment not known for its safety, says Chipchase.

For some challenges though, there are unique local solutions. Since many users have mobile phones but no access to electricity, battery charging stalls (shown in the photo below) have popped up in cities like Mazar-e-Sharif. One hours battery charging costs 10 Afghanis or 0.2 cents. A stall carries a variety of chargers to suit different phones. To charge the phone, a user is given a number tag and the same number is attached to the battery and the phone. It’s a system similar to how valets keep track of the keys of a parked car.

CD players and boom boxes are sold by the roadside in cities but music is clearly moving towards mobile, says Chipchase. There are a number of “corner-shop app stores,” he says, that offer to side-load ringtones, applications and movies on mobile phones.

A mobile charging stall in Mazar-e-Sharif carries a number of battery chargers.

A twenty year old Sony calculator wrapped by a carpenter-made casing and still in use by its one owner a Mazar e Sharif cloth trader.

All photos courtesy: Jan Chipchase/Frog Design

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Apple’s iPhone users may be buying more apps but when it comes to mobile ads, it is Android customers who are click happy, says an online advertising network.

Android users click on ads 81 percent more often than those who have an iPhone. That makes Android users much more valuable to advertisers, says online ad network Chitika. But here’s another interesting data point. Apple’s iPad did better than the iPhone when it comes to ad click-through rates. The data is based on a sample of 1.3 million impressions across Chitika’s network.

“iPad users are much more likely to click ads than their iPhone-using contemporaries. This may be chalked up to the difference in display size,” says Chitika on its blog.

The numbers from Chitika are similar to those from another mobile ad company called Smaato in June. Android devices are more friendly to mobile ads compared to the iPhone, says Smaato.

The data about how smartphone users react on different platforms comes as Apple has started rolling out its iAds mobile advertising platform. So far, only five of the 17 iAd launch partners have managed to roll out their advertising campaigns since Apple introduced iAds in April.

Though early advertisers have said they are happy with the results they have seen so far, data from companies like Chitika and Smaato is not an encouraging sign for Apple.

It is not clear why Android devices are ahead of the iPhone when it comes to getting consumer attention for ads, says Chitika. Android users show a click-through rate of 1.187 percent compared to 0.654 percent click-through rates on the iPhone. The lack of iPhone-like elegance in the Android’s interface could result in more user clicks–including those on mobile ads, says Gigaom.

But that alone can’t explain why the Android platform is ahead of the iPhone in getting consumer attention for mobile ads. It’s something that Apple may also be trying to find the answer to.

Chart: Chitika

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Apple iPad will finally have some real competition. Samsung is set to introduce a tablet next month called ‘Galaxy Tab’ that will have a 7-inch touchscreen display.

The device will run Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, include video calling capability and full web browsing—which is likely means support for Flash, according to a teaser video that Samsung posted Tuesday morning. Samsung is expected to announce additional details on September 2 at the IFA Berlin consumer electronics show.

Samsung’s video shows a tablet with a black bezel and four buttons that are similar to what we have seen in Android smartphones.

The Galaxy Tab will be the first tablet from a big consumer electronics maker since Apple’s iPad debuted in April. Earlier this month, Dell launched the Streak, a device with a 5-inch display that has been billed as a tablet but is priced and acts like a phone. Meanwhile, Apple is charging ahead with the iPad. Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads.

Other companies such as HP and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion are also working on tablets. HP has said its slate will use Palm’s web OS operating system but that tablet is unlikely to be released this year. RIM is hoping to get its tablet called ‘BlackPad’, a companion device to the BlackBerry phone out at the end of the year.

Samsung’s choice of a 7-inch screen is interesting. There have been rumors that Apple is working on a similar sized tablet.

So far, Samsung hasn’t revealed details around pricing or when the Galaxy Tab will be available to consumers. But this is a major sign that the tablet market is heating up and new devices that we have been hearing about for months are finally getting closer to market.

Photo: Samsung website

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Don’t type when you can talk, says Google. The search giant has strengthened its existing voice command feature on Android and introduced a new application called Chrome-to-Phone, for syncing with Chrome browsers.

Voice Search, despite its name, now lets you do more than just search: It will let users send texts, compose e-mails, call businesses, navigate, jot notes, and set the alarm on their phone by just speaking into the device.

The voice commands, called “voice actions,” are part of Google’s effort to improve the user interface on Android and let consumers go beyond the traditional keyboard and touchscreen interface on their phones.

The Voice Search application is currently available only for phones running version 2.2 of the Android OS — which means HTC Evo, Droid X and Droid 2 users can get it on their phones immediately.

Google also launched a mobile sync app to link its Chrome browser to Android 2.2 devices. The tool, called Chrome-to-Phone, lets users on Google’s Chrome browser click an icon to send a web page or a map to their phone. The page or map is then almost immediately available on the phone.

“This is a low-latency, super-fast app for pushing data to the phone,” says Dave Burke, engineering manager for Google.

Google debuted its voice search application in the U.S. about two years ago when it introduced Android. Now one out of every four queries, or 25 percent of queries, on devices running Android 2.0 OS and higher comes through the voice interface, says Google.

The earlier version of the voice command allowed users to do just three things: web search, call a specific contact and navigate to an address.

The new voice search app goes beyond that. For instance, you can speak the name of a song or a band into the phone and the app will go online, find the music and show a list of apps such as Pandora and last.fm that can play the music you want.

For more details, check out Google’s list of voice commands available through the app.

But when it comes to the Chrome-to-Phone app, the service is more limited. It is currently available to only Chrome users, though some Firefox users are also using it. The sync feature is also only available for Android devices, though Google says it will work to bring the feature to iPhone users as an app.

Image: Screenshots of Voice Search courtesy Google.

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HTC’s Droid Eris phone is getting a second lease on life as a tour guide in a Disney amusement park. Disney has taken the smartphone, added a frame around it to turn it into a device running an app that shows wait times for rides, offers discounts and indicates show times at the park.

The repurposed Eris also gives out tips and tricks and coupons for use in the park.

HTC launched the Droid Eris in November as a $100 smartphone (with a two-year contract) on Verizon Wireless. The Droid Eris had a 3.2-inch display, a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and GPS capability. It also used HTCs Sense custom skin for Android. In June, Verizon said it has retired the Droid Eris.

Meanwhile, last year Disney also launched its Mobile Magic app for mostly feature phones and non-Android smartphones. The app gives users detailed information about the different Disney theme parks in the U.S. Now with the Android version of the app running on the Eris, Disney hopes to connect with those users who are already at the park.

Check out the video to see the Mobile Magic app on the Droid Eris

Ultimately, the Eris phone running the app may be offered as a free or “low cost add-on” for visitors on the trip, says the MickeyUpdates site.

Photo: Mickeyupdates.com

[via Engadget]

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If you aren’t thrilled about 3-D movies or 3-D TV, how about a 3-D smartphone? Sharp say sit will have a 3-D cellphone out by the end of the year that doesn’t require consumers to wear special glasses.

The phone will also include a 3-D camera module, a Sharp spokesperson told Reuters.

A 3-D phone from Sharp is likely to include the same kind of display that the company has shown on the Nintendo 3DS handheld game console. The 3DS has a 3.5-inch display that lets consumers hold the device up and perceive 3-D images using the idea a parallax barrier. The technique uses a layer thats placed over an LCD screen to produce the feeling of depth by directing slightly different images to each eye.

As cellphone processors become more powerful and telecom carriers introduce 4G networks capable of transporting more data, companies are looking at 3-D as a way to differentiate and excite consumers. In 2009, Japanese wireless carrier KDDI started selling the first commercially available 3-D cellphone called the Hitachi Woo. More than 300,000 devices were sold in in just a few weeks.

Last month, MasterImage 3-D, a Burbank, California, company that makes 3-D displays told Wired.com that it is talking to almost all major handset makers in the U.S. about offering 3-D display to consumers. The first 3-D cellphone could be available in the United Statesnext year, says MasterImage.

Sharp hopes to beat that. But it needs better luck with the planned 3-D phone that has had with the Kin–the last much-hyped cellphone that was manufactured by Sharp.

Photo: (Josh Hill/Flickr)

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After offering previews of its Windows Phone 7 platform last month, Microsoft seems ready to take the next step to get it to market.

The company seems to have set shipping dates for the platform and Europe will be the first to get it.

At a conference, Microsoft’s chief operating officer Kevin Turner told attendees that the company is looking to transition to Windows Phone 7 around October in Europe and November in the U.S.

“We are back in this game,” says Turner in this video posted on Engadget. “And this game is not over.”

In the next three to five years, 450 million smartphones will be sold, he says. That’s double the smartphones sold today.

“When you look at this (Windows 7) phone and some of the UI (user interface), it’s not like any phone you have ever seen from Microsoft,” says Turner. “And I think that’s a good thing.”

Microsoft is working with companies such as Samsung and LG for the hardware.

Over the last three years, Microsoft’s Windows mobile operating system has been eclipsed by rivals such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone OS. For the three months ending May, RIM’s BlackBerry OS ranked first with about 41.7 percent market share in the U.S., followed by Apple at 24.4 percent and Microsoft at 13.2 percent, according to Comscore. Android OS came in fourth at 13 percent but Android has been moving up the ranks steadily gaining points while its rivals are losing share.

Microsoft is betting Windows 7 phone will help turn the tide. The new Windows 7 OS has a snazzy new user interface, integration with Zune market for games and music, and search by Bing. (Check out Gizmodo’s in-depth look at Windows Phone 7.)

In the U.S., AT&T has said it plans to be the “premier” carrier for the platform. AT&T has been slow to embrace Google’s Android platform and it will be interesting to see the size of the bet it will place on Microsoft.

Photo: (brendanlim/Flickr)

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An Android app that offers free wallpapers is allegedly gathering data about its users, including their phone numbers, carrier subscriber identifiers, and phone number of their voicemail accounts. The app then sends this data to a website based in China, says mobile security firm Lookout.

The Android app, called Jackeey, is estimated to have anywhere from one to four million downloads.

“While the data accessed are certainly suspicious coming from wallpaper apps, we’re not saying that these applications are malicious,” Kevin Mahaffey, founder and CTO of Lookout wrote in an e-mail to Android Central. “There have been cases in the past where the applications are simply a little overzealous in their data-gathering practices, but not because of any ill intent.”

The Jackeey app does not touch the SMS and browsing capabilities of the phone. Lookout made the disclosure at the ongoing Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. (See Wired.com’s Threat Level blog for more coverage of Black Hat.)

Wired.com was not able to get in contact with the developers of the Jackeey wallpapers.

While one Android app has been singled out, many iPhone apps also intrude into the users’ privacy, says Lookout. A survey of 300,000 applications for both the iPhone and Android OS found twice as many free applications on the iPhone have the capability to access the users contact data (14 percent) as compared to Android (8 percent).

“Ultimately, the device OS makers should focus on better security,” says Dimitri Volkmann, a vice-president at Good Technology, which provides mobile security and device management for businesses. “It’s more about the maturity of the vendors rather than control vs. open source.”

How the data gathered from users is handled has been a minefield for phone makers. In 2009, a developer found the Palm Pres operating system webOS sent his GPS location back to the company every day. Palm was also monitoring the webOS apps he used each day, and for how long he used each one. The outcry forced Palm to change how it handles data gathered by the OS.

Android app Jackeey’s mis-steps in handling user data has hurt and embarrassed them. But with thousands of apps in the Android app store and little supervision, it’s just a matter of time before there’s a bigger mobile security risk with major consequences to consumers.

Photo: (marketingfacts/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews