Mobile web traffic reports show Symbian, OS X on top

Ready for the latest dose of facts and figures to chat over at the nerd water cooler? Here goes! The latest AdMob report, which tracks mobile web traffic from a variety of handset models and operating systems, has found some rather interesting -- if not completely unsurprising -- results. For starters, we're told that the biggest web surfing phone on each US carrier is a touchscreen model, and breaking that down, we find that the iPhone, Nokia N70 and BlackBerry 8300 take the top three spots (in order of mention) globally. As for OS, Symbian is still leading the pack from a worldwide perspective with 43 percent of requests, though the iPhone ain't far behind at 33 percent; oh, and in case you were wondering, Apple's darling generated 50 percent of all US mobile web traffic in February. More numbers in the links below, should you be inclined to visit.


[ Via: mocoNews ]

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Kogan intros world's second Android phone: Agora / Agora Pro

We'll be totally honest -- we pretty much blew Ruslan Kogan off when he proclaimed that he was about to push out a $199 Android phone by the year's end. And truthfully, the guy still hasn't totally delivered, but you won't find us kvetching about more Googlephones, regardless of MSRP. The Agora (AU$299; US$192) and Agora Pro (AU$399; US$256) are available for pre-order as we speak, though neither one is scheduled to ship out until the end of January. For those unfamiliar with Kogan, it's an online-only enterprise that has wares built specifically to its dimensions in China, and so far as we can tell, it's as legit as they come. As for specs, the Agora packs a 2.5-inch touchscreen (320 x 240), 3G networking, a backlit QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth 2.0 and a microSD card slot; the Pro adds in GPS, 2-megapixel camera and WiFi. So, with unsubsidized prices this low, are you willing to take a chance?

[ Via: iTWire ]
[ Tag: android, australia, breaking news, BreakingNews, global, google, google phone, GooglePhone, Kogan, ODM, OEM, open source, open-source, OpenSource, Ruslan Kogan, RuslanKogan ]

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The Inside Story of the Android Font [Android]

We've complained (maybe carped is a better word) about the lack of design unity in Android, but the truth is, there is one design element that's consistent across the entire OS: the Droid font, the result of an intense, two-year collaboration between digital typeface company Ascender and Google. Throughout the design process, it swung from bubbly, candy-coated Google cuteness to a harsher, blocky techno style before something more neutral and approachable was settled on—Droid. It's the only font on the phone—apps will use it too, since it's in the SDK—with three variants: serif, sans serif and monospace. So it's a good thing they took their time. Unfortunately don't expect the usual Google easter eggs, since it was thought they would annoy developers, though I would've liked to see that Android icon. Typography geeks, what's your take?
[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]
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T-Mobile G1 Android Phone Hands-On [T-mobile G1]

We just got an early hands on with T-Mobile's G1 Android and yes, it does look as nice as it does in the photos. The screen is fantastic, and it's actually not as chunky as it looks, but it's definitely not iPhone-skinny. You can see the Sizemodo here, and we'll have even more details and a more in-depth hands-on in a bit. UPDATE: Updating hands-on impressions live, right now. UPDATE 2: Now with full video walkthrough and even more impressions.

In your hand the G1 feels good. Solid and all-plastic, but not nearly as clunky as the blurrycam photos showed. Getting used to the controls takes a little bit—babies can't pick up and instantly know their way around, like on the iPhone. Control wise, it suffers from a bit of schizophrenia—with a trackball, touchscreen, candybar mode and flip-out QWERTY, there's a lot going on at once. What's nice is that it seems to not lock you in to anyone type of control interface—scrolling with trackball and touching work at the same time in many apps. Physically, the flip-out LCD feels solid and springy. Keyboard keys are small, spongy and a bit recessed, so it's hard to touch type right off by the feel of the keys. The touchscreen is better than we had hoped—far better than the HTC Touch's slow-to-respond screen. Scrolling is smooth at times, clunky at others, depending on the app. It's not multitouch, so it uses a "long press" UI element quite a bit—like to drag an app from the pop-out menu to the desktop—but since the touch is fairly responsive, it works pretty well. You use the menu button a lot, more than we'd like. For instance, in the browser, our instinct—kind of biased one, admittedly—is to touch the top of the screen to pop up the URL. Here, you've gotta press menu. Same with any other app, to do pretty much anything. It also pulls the Palm move of having the home button be separate from the power/lock button, so if you push the red button instinctively to kill an app, you're just going to lock your phone. Browsing: It may just be that we're not comfortable with it yet, but the browsing is kind of cludgy. Again, control is an issue - lots of UI to fight through. Scrolling and zooming around a rendered page is a bit jerky as well, but on par with Opera Mini and similar mobile browsers. The touch zoom buttons don't work as intuitively or respond as tightly as they should. Even though they're both based on Webkit, it's not as smooth as multitouch Safari, yet. Scrolling around web pages with the trackball is definitely smoother and more intuitive, immediately, than using the touch screen. Google Apps: We didn't have a Gmail account loaded, so we couldn't see incoming messages, but the app looks minimalistic and was snappy. Text input is with the QWERTY keyboard, as it is with every app right now. It's kinda subdued, missing the colorful bubbly design of the Gmail Mobile app for other phones. Interestingly, there is a Google Talk service active within the IM app, even though we had heard from the Android Devs that GTalk was not making it into the first version of the software. Maps is top-notch—we found our location within a few seconds indoors on Manhattan's far east side with combines GPS and cell-tower. It's incredibly optimized, perhaps the smoothest app experience we've had yet. And Compass View, which uses accelerometers to predict where you're pointing the phone to scroll around Street View accordingly, is rad—augmented reality, here we come. There is no native Docs app in the first release. Android Market: Android Market appears to be fully functional—we grabbed Pac Man and installed it over the air with 3G. Overall it seems like a very, very similar experience to the App Store—downloads once under way get kicked to your notification tray for progress, and they appear in your main app pull-out drawer when finished. Pac-Man started up immediately. Here we grab Pac-Man:
Apps in the Background: Background apps are handled with a system-wide pull-down notifications drawer in the upper left corner. When we received an IM while in another app, the sender's name blinked and we could pull it down to view. Downloading apps also appear in the notifications tray. Multitasking is handled in an interesting way - apps never truly "quit." According to Dan Morrill, one of Google's Android software guys, it seems In most cases, the actual GUI app that you interact with on the phone (say to view your IMs) runs independently of code at a deeper, service level. That way, you don't have to be running the GUI for an app to still have it function. A task manager shows you the six most recent apps, but beyond that, the system handles which apps quit and which ones stay open entirely by itself, based on memory usage needs. Headphone Jack: Yeah, there isn't one. You'll have to use a USB adapter. Which isn't included. Sigh. Music App: Not the prettiest. Integrates cover art nicely if it's there and gets the job done with sorting by album, artist, playlist—the usual. Speaker is nice and loud for when you don't have your USB adapter. All music and media has to be side-loaded and read off an SD card, and it'll have a 1GB one included. Amazon MP3 Store: The interface is extremely well designed, and incredibly easy to use, just as good as iTunes Wi-Fi store on our first impression. It's tied to your Amazon account, so you can buy with 1-click. You have to be connected to Wi-Fi to download it on the spot, but you can buy anytime. We actually tried to grab a song with our account, but ran into the SD card problem (as you can see in the gallery). And in some over-3G-downloading, and it'd be golden. Dev Tools: Befitting an Linux device, the shipping G1 will feature a debug mode that, when tied to a PC via USB, allows for plenty of tinkering with apps. Security layers prevent you from futzing with the core code and application and service data, but if you have privileges, you can develop directly on the phone. Anotther interesting feature is ability to install applications from a non-Android Market source. That means that it will be possible to download full applications directly from developers and install them independently from the Market. Core security again blocks apps that violate terms of services (VoIP or Amazon MP3 downloads over 3G are both confirmed no-nos), but awesome to see that the software is so accessible without any prior approval.

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]
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How the T-Mobile G1 Stacks Up To Its Frienemies [Android]

The T-Mobile G1 launched today with a rich feature set, but how does it, powered by the Android OS, stack up against competition from Apple, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile? We pieced together this chart so you can size up the G1 against its competition at a glance. Click through for the image big-sized. And keep in mind that MicroSD cards max at 8GB for the time being, even though some of these phones technically support more.

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]
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Google Brings Push Gmail, Google Maps Street View, Other Tight Integration to the G1 [Android]

Android is here, and as to be expected with a Google-made mobile OS, there's a bit of Google App fanciness going on. In fact, it's designed with Google Apps in mind so much that whether or not you're a user of Gmail and other services might determine how useful the phone will be to you. The G1 will be the first phone to offer push Gmail, which is something we're expecting to see on the iPhone in the not too distant future. Gmail also features a Google Talk presence on Android, thanks to the fact that Gmail gets its own mail app while all other mail services are relegated to a simpler one. You can sync you contacts and appointments with the G1, but only via Google's services; no Outlook and Exchange support here. In fact, you must have a Google account to use this phone, according to Walt Mossberg. Google Maps offers street view that you can control using the built-in compass, turning the phone around and looking around like you're actually there. A neat gimmick, but we'll see how useful it actually ends up being. Here's a video Google released on Google Mobile Apps integration:

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]
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Android Market Might Be Even Bigger Mess Than Apple's App Store [Google Android]

Android Market is officially out of the bag. The application store for Google's Android cellphones only contains free software for now and there is no approval process for the software: it's an open content distribution system. The structure is similar to the iPhone App Store, with a rating system similar to YouTube's. Google is touting their experience as a search engine and infrastructure provider as advantages to Apple's store, but would that be really useful if everyone and their dogs can submit their flashlight apps? As shown in today's presentation, some developers are very excited about Android Market. In the keynote, T-Mobile and Google have pushed the Open Source aspect of the new store. But at the end, as demonstrated by the barrage of useless applications that inundate the Apple's iPhone App Store, what really counts is the overall quality of the software and how the best applications can reach the consumers. That's where the rating system may come handy, but like with YouTube, there's not warranty that the really good things will float up, specially since you are limited to the G1 built-in store. There's a good side to the open no-limits, no-approval nature of the system: developers can publish anything they want. No prohibitions and controls means that developers will be able to access any part of the hardware, allowing software that is not allowed in the iPhone App Store, like tethering. On the other side, this may also bring bad things to the user end, since it opens the door to potential problems and conflicts that may affect the stability of the Android cellphone. The lack of a desktop component may be the biggest problem for final users, an online shop that allows you to easily surf through different options and manage your applications (as well as any other content). This could make things more difficult for consumers. Once we try the store—which looks extremely similar to Apple's own—and see how you manage the software, we will be able to answer this question more throughly. For now, however, the idea that everything has to happen over the air in a tiny screen may make Google's solution a weaker one than Apple's, which in its current form has problems on its own.

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]
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