14 DAY TRIAL // Another week, another batch of news, rumors and updates on mobile phones, applications and operating systems made it to the headlines. Since the end of 2009 is nearing, it seems that companies are either planning things for the upcoming year, or are entering the holiday season, yet there were still some very interesting tidbits that emerged during this week. The hottest stories have seen HTC and Motorola DROID as their main characters, the former with its lineup for the first half of 2010 leaked to the web, the latter with the Android 2.0.1 update already being rolled out to users.
The Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC entered once again the leaked roadmap area, following the exposure of its future Android handsets, something that we covered during the last week. Among the newly spotted phones from the company, the Android-based HTC Bravo made a step forward, with a second leaked image that surfaced, and with rumors pointing out that it and the longer rumored HTC Passion (which should arrive in 2010) are one and the same device. However, this is only one of the five Android phones HTC is set to launch next year, while the total number of devices that should hit store shelves in 2010 with Google's platform on board is expected to top 50.
The handset vendor had, in a way, a pretty busy week, with new YOU commercials released on the web for three of its handsets available in the US at the moment, namely Hero, Imagio and Tilt2, and with a series of ROM upgrades that it posted on its support website. Among them, we can count a Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM update for the Touch Pro2 at Orange, a Digital Picture Enhancement update for the HTC HD2, which suffered from some software issues related to its photo snapper, and another ROM update for the European version of the high-end Windows Mobile-based device.
Another HTC handset that saw a software update this week is the Droid Eris from Verizon, a handheld rumored to be slated for yet another ROM update in early 2010, only that the upcoming one should bring its Android OS to version 2.0 or 2.1, something that should happen with Motorola DROID too, the top gadget of 2009. Big Red is currently sending the update to DROID and Droid Eris users over the air, a practice that is said to be highly cost saving, and is expected to complete the processes in a matter of days. For what it’s worth, when its LTE network is fired up, similar processes might get completed in a shorter period of time, that's for sure.
Still in the Android area, Motorola MILESTONE, the European version of DROID, reached the market in the UK, and sold out in only a couple of hours after being put on sale at Expansys. The handset was accompanied in the country by Acer's Liquid A1 device, which received a well deserved unboxing video shooting, and which has just passed through FCC's courtyard. The phone is expected to have a number of five to six Android brothers from the company during the first half of the next year. Moreover, Acer is also said to plan delivering 3G handsets to the market in China next year, in collaboration with China Mobile and China Unicom.
Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia also had a busy week, being recently countersued by Apple for claimed infringement of 13 patents, and planning the closing of a series of flagship stores in the UK and the US. However, the company still had time to unveil a series of new mobile phones, including the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition, the Nokia 6700 classic Gold Edition, and Nokia 5235 Comes With Music, as well as to make the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition available for purchase in the US. The company also announced plans to revamp its Ovi Store during the next year, and has added a Rihanna App to the storefront this week.
The past few days came with good news for Canadian mobile phone users, as Bell launched two new appealing handsets in the country, the Samsung Galaxy and Nokia N97, both available for purchase now, while Telus added the Windows Mobile 6.5-powered LG IQ to its offering. Other handhelds that reached the market this week would be INQ Chat 3G in the UK and the ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet 8GB that can be purchased now from Radio Shack, but we should also mention that the Sony Ericsson Satio has been put back on sale, following the release of a firmware update for its issues.
Another area that boosted life this week is the mobile browsing segment, with new versions of available solutions, and with analyst estimations that over one billion mobile devices would connect to the Internet by 2013, and that browsing the web from a handset had all the chances of leading to mobile data jams. Bistream released the BOLT 1.6 version of its browser, Skyfire went 1.5 a few days ago, we learned that Firefox mobile (Fennec) might see a release candidate next week, with a final flavor before the year's end, and Opera announced that its Opera Mobile 10 would soon be launched on four mobile platforms: Android, BREW, Symbian and Windows Mobile.
Since social networking is on the rise, we should also mention that Symbian users can now enjoy two new solutions on their handsets, namely a beta version of Skype, as well as a Nimbuzz application that sports Twitter functionality. Moreover, there is a fresh call blocking app available for them, SBSH WhiteList 1.0. Still in the software solutions area, we should mention Documents To Go Viewer Edition now available for Nokia N900, as well as new features announced by Google for its services, among which Google Goggles, a visual search option, stands up.
In the mobile operating systems area, we've seen Samsung going official with its bada platform, and Microsoft delaying the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 to the end of the next year, something that might hurt the OS a lot, since it is already seen as a dead end. Android, on the other hand, is expected to come on iDEN and WiMAX devices in the near future, while also arriving in the US for AT&T's users packed inside the rumored Motorola Motus.
Among the other pieces of news that might interest those who arrived this far with the reading, we should mention that there are people working on phone skins that can change their color according to the user's wish, that Orange launched its own software solutions portal, the Application Shop, or the fact that the BlackBerry App World now has a themes section. Some novelties in the Windows Mobile area are also available, along with the upcoming emergence of TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE BlackBerry devices. And a new Samsung M5650 Lindy handset, which popped up with a look that reminds us of the already available Corby phone.
