Sprint Joins March of the Androids With HTC Hero

The Android mobile operating system has officially expanded to a second U.S. wireless carrier. The HTC Hero smartphone, sporting the Google-backed Android OS, will be offered by Sprint this October; meanwhile, T-Mobile still also offers a line of Android handsets. The Hero is a feature-rich smartphone with a competitive price, but will it bump up against another top-shelf Sprint phone, the Palm Pre?

Can a Hero fly to Sprint's (NYSE: S) rescue in the battle for smartphone supremacy?
The Hero will sell for US$179 after a $50 instant savings, and a $100 mail-in rebate.

The HTC Hero Android smartphone
If nothing else, Thursday's announcement that a second carrier will soon offer a phone using the Android operating system could be another blow for truth, justice and the American wa

y of providing more gadgets for tech-hungry consumers.
Beginning Oct. 11, Sprint will join T-Mobile as wireless providers offering Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android OS phones. The HTC Hero will also join the Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) Pre

as Sprint's answer to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone and other high-tech, feature-laden phones.
Sprint's press release plays up two trends that handset makers and wireless providers

are banking on for boosted sales: social media and application store offerings.
Access to Google Search, Maps, Gmail and YouTube , as expected, lead the highlighted features, along with Android Market applications for Facebook , Flickr , Twitter , MySpace , Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Pandora Radio. The HTC Hero also has a 5 -megapixel camera and camcorder, WiFi capabilities and a slot for a microSD card.

Android Love This is an important milestone for the Android platform, which has taken some time to ramp up," IDC analyst Al Hilwa told TechNewsWorld. "The significance is bringing another carrier onboard, and Google is showing some improved muscle in striking partnerships in this area."
The interest in Android is not lost on those who are writing the applications.

"Developer appeal is an important factor to be considered in evaluating who will end up ahead in the platform wars for phones. Android's openness will help solidify it as a popular target for developers, especially for Web-style applications. The connection to Google's Web apps is an asset to some, and so is support for the Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash platform, which the iPhone now lacks," Hilwa said.
Apple is a tough act to follow, and it's still in the early rounds in the smartphone fight. However, "adoption by carriers and hardware manufacturers is an important metric to watch," Hilwa said

Will Consumers Need Another Hero?

When it comes to which operating system is on a smartphone, "I don't see people saying, 'I'm going to buy that because it has Android in it,'" ABI Research analyst Jeff Orr told TechNewsWorld. "[Consumers] are not necessarily going to think about the OS as much as they are price point and feature set -- the ability to meet somebody's lifestyle needs or criteria for use."
That said, Orr believes the Hero's features clearly put the phone within the pro-sumer category of expected buyers. "It's for somebody who wants to have access to everything. This is not just a smartphone that they're going to use for PDA kinds of functions. It's offered with Sprint TV and a number of other mobile video kinds of services, and it has access to social networking, visual voice mail. This is a does-everything kind of phone, and I would say it's more intended to compete with the iPhone than the Pre."
Will that guarantee Hero sales won't cannibalize the Palm Pre for Sprint?
"There's going to be some amount because they're trying to broaden their portfolio, and there doesn't seem to be any one-to-one mapping of 'This is your business handset,'" Orr said. "But there's going to be competition, and Sprint needs to be in that position that they need to have a variety of handsets."

Windows Mobile Gets Fall Fashion Update

Microsoft is edging closer to the consumer-friendly look RIM and Apple are known for with the latest updates to its mobile operating system for smartphones. Redmond still has some distance to close before it can match the popular appeal of those brands, however, suggested Jeff Bradley, AT&T's senior vice president for devices.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is giving its operating system for smartphones a new look in time for the holiday shopping season.
The world's largest software maker said Tuesday that phones running the next version of Windows Mobile will hit store shelves worldwide on Oct. 6.
"Windows Mobile 6.5," as the new system is called, has an updated look that brings Microsoft's offering more in line with competitors such as Research In Motion's (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry and Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone.

Windows Marketplace

Windows Mobile 6.5 includes a new version of its Internet Explorer browser for phones, along with changes that make it easier to use on touchscreen devices.
Microsoft also has developed a free service called "My Phone" that lets people synchronize text messages, contacts, photos and other phone data on the Internet, where it can be edited or transferred to a new phone.
Microsoft is also launching a mobile application store akin to Apple's store for iPhone apps on iTunes.
The company would not say how many developers have submitted applications for the Windows Marketplace for Mobile so far.

Roping In Consumers

AT&T (NYSE: T) , Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) and Verizon Wireless will all market new Windows Mobile phones, Microsoft said.
AT&T will give people who use Windows Mobile 6.5 phones with certain data plans access to its network of WiFi hot spots without additional charge, a perk already enjoyed by iPhone and BlackBerry owners.
Microsoft is betting the updated smartphone system will lure more consumers while still appealing to the corporate technology gurus who like the way it works with company email servers.
Still Lagging
AT&T's senior vice president for devices, Jeff Bradley, said in an interview that the new system is a good step for Microsoft but certainly not its last.
"I don't think it catches them up to what is setting the bar today," Bradley said. "I think they've got a definite plan to introduce an even more consumer-friendly and competitive interface and set of services."
Microsoft would not comment on plans for the next version of the mobile operating system.

iPhone's Slow Boat to China Finally Arrives

Wireless carrier China Unicom says it's landed a deal with Apple to offer the iPhone in the world's most populous country. Gray market iPhones and all-out rip-offs already exist there, but Unicom will be the first carrier to sell it in an official capacity. However, some of the phone's features will apparently be disabled in order to satisfy the Chinese government.

After at least two years of trying, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has finally cracked the China market.
China Unicom, the second largest wireless carrier in China, announced on Friday that it will begin carrying iPhones in the third quarter.
The terms of the deal seem to be more favorable to the carrier than those of other carrier deals Apple has managed to strike in the past.

The China Unicom Deal

The news that it had signed a deal with Apple was buried in the depths of a press announcement China Unicom released on Friday.
"On 28 August, the Company and Apple reached a three-year agreement for the Company to sell iPhones in China," the announcement read. "The initial launch is expected to be in the fourth calendar quarter of 2009. This will provide users with brand new communication and information experience."
Apple is keeping quiet; the latest entry in the "Hot News" section of its press page was The New York Times' David Pogue's favorable review of Snow Leopard, dated Thursday.
Cupertino did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
While neither company is apparently ready to say much about the deal, Reuters quoted China Unicom chairman and chief executive Chang Xiaobing as saying iPhones would be priced competitively.
Unicom has bought iPhones in bulk from Apple, Reuters also reported.
In addition, China Unicom will not share revenue with Apple, as other wireless carriers offering iPhones do, according to The Wall Street Journal.

About China Unicom

China Unicom, founded as a government-owned corporation, was established in 1994 by the Ministry of Information Industry. Last year, it merged with China Netcom Group.
Unicom Group holds just over 57 percent of China Unicom; public investors hold just over 13 percent; S.K. Telecom and Telefonica Internacional S.A.U. hold a total of just over 10 percent; and the remaining more than 20 percent is publicly traded on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges.
In January, Beijing awarded China Unicom a WCDMA license to expand its business to 3G communications, and, in July, the company signed a US$700 million deal with Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY) to upgrade its GSM network.
China Unicom plans to cover 335 cities with 3G by the end of the year, instead of 284 as originally planned.
"The Company will continue to push forward the 3G pre-commercial trial and aims for a successful launch of 3G business within the year," reads the China Unicom press release.

The User Experience

All iPhones legally sold in China must exclude their WiFi feature by Chinese law. That's probably because it's more difficult to track Internet users accessing the Web over WiFi, speculated Carl Howe, director of anywhere consumer research at Yankee Group.
"WiFi routers are consumer devices and, if router owners can sneak them onto a broadband carrier, they can send and receive data without the government's knowledge, assuming the broadband connection doesn't have a wiretap," Howe told MacNewsWorld.
The government of China is known to actively censored parts of the Internet it deems pornographic, politically subversive, or otherwise unacceptable. Earlier this year, it had issued a ruling calling for all computers sold in the country to have Internet filtering software pre-installed. After an international outcry, it partially rescinded the edict, but the Green Dam Youth Escort software will still be pre-installed on all computers in schools.
Howe pointed out that, like the government of the U.S. and other governments, the Chinese government retains the right to tap wireless carriers' traffic. "Here in the U.S., it's a requirement of wireless carrier licenses that the government can get a wiretap if they want one, and it's no different in China and elsewhere," he said.
The iPhone's WiFi feature will likely be deactivated, but it probably won't be removed, Allen Nogee, principal analyst for wireless technology and infrastructure at In-Stat, told MacNewsWorld.
That could be because China might want to promote its own technology. "China has its own WiFi standard called 'WAPI,' which could be enabled by China Unicom with a software upgrade," Nogee said.
He also believes China Unicom will promote its own app store to iPhone users. "It's likely that China will not allow the Apple App Store as it currently exists," Nogee said. "Details haven't been announced, but it's likely China Unicom will run their own application store for subscribers."

Thinking Out of the iPhone Box

Disabling the feature may not mean much to iPhone fans in China, who are already looking for ways around the restriction.
"Hopefully, it's just disabled, and there'll be an easy hack to re-enable WiFi," wrote a commenter going by the handle "JKP" in response to an article in the International Business Times that China Unicom had pre-ordered 5 million iPhones. "Lord knows we users in China are used to hacking our iPhones." The carrier denied that story the next day.
"Would be great if there was a way to simply hack the phone and restore WiFi," BCC wrote. "I know that they enable WiFi on a lot of Nokia (NYSE: NOK) phones here through hacking also."

A Shot in the Arm for Apple?

Landing the China deal could be a huge boost for Apple, as markets in the developed world, except for Japan, are generally saturated.
China Unicom has nearly 140.4 million GSM subscribers, according to a 2009 interim results announcement issued Friday.
Demand for the iPhone is hot -- Kevin Wang, director of China research for iSuppli, had previously told MacNewsWorld that about 33 million handsets will be sold on the gray market within China this year, and iPhones constitute a healthy percentage of this.
China Unicom will start cautiously with iPhone sales , In-Stat's Nogee said. "My guess is they'll feel a bit uncomfortable with the iPhone initially and will go slow rather than fast, at least at first."
However, fake iPhones will be an ever bigger problem. "These can sell for $200 or less and they don't work very well, but they do look like an iPhone, and in China, status and fashion can be even more important than function," he said.

Cellphones With a Penchant for Pix

Not all cellphone cameras are created equal. Some handsets have advanced features in their cameras, like in-device editing functions and optical zoom lenses. Of the bunch tested, the Samsung Memoir came out on top, though all of the others seem to have their own strengths and weaknesses, depending on what you intend to shoot with them.

Pretty much any cellphone you'd buy today comes with a digital camera, but only a few are good enough to take the place of even a cheap point-and-shoot.
It can be tricky to sniff out which phones really fall into that category. Highly advertised features, like a mass of megapixels and multiple settings, do not always add up to a solid camera. However, after testing five devices from different manufacturers and wireless carriers, I can suggest some that prove it is indeed possible to get a good cell phone that also takes crystal-clear photos.

Marvelous Memoir

My favorite of the bunch is the 8-megapixel Samsung Memoir, which packs an impressive set of camera and phone functions into a slick package.

Samsung Memoir
The Memoir (US$200 from T-Mobile with a two-year contract and mail-in rebate, but available for $50 from Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) with a contract) sports a crisp touchscreen that is helpful for accessing the camera's numerous features. Those include mosaic and panorama shooting modes, as well as a feature that can warn you when one of your photo subjects blinked in a picture.
Taking photos is simple with the dedicated capture and zoom buttons on one side. The Memoir's flash can handle darker scenes fairly well, too.
The Memoir's built-in editing options let you crop photos, adjust colors or white balance, insert various effects and more. If you forgot to take a certain shot in black and white, no problem -- you can adjust it after the fact.
The Memoir has its weak points. It snaps photos slower than another contender I tried, the Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) Pre. And like most of the phones I tested, it lacks optical zoom, which gives more detailed images and lets you shoot from farther away. The Memoir uses a digital "zoom" that simply crops and magnifies what you see on the screen to give the appearance of moving in closer.
I often felt the touch screen wasn't that responsive, or at least wasn't doing what I expected it would when I tapped it. It would have been nice if the phone came with more storage space than just a 1 gigabyte memory card, too. Here's a look at some other camera phones

Frill-Free Pre

Palm Pre: The Pre ($200 with a two-year Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) contract and mail-in rebate) is a strong smart phone, nd on closer inspection I learned it also has a great, simple camera.
The Pre's 3-megapixel camera is frill-free: Its only real feature is the ability to turn its flash on or off or put it on auto.
However, what the Pre shoots, it shoots well. The handset had the least amount of shutter lag of any camera phone I tried, and did a good job of adjusting the brightness of shots in different lighting situations. It generally produced sharp, color-rich photos.

Water Off an Ugly Duck

Casio Exilim: The Casio Exilim ($280 with a two-year Verizon Wireless contract and online rebate) was the ugly duckling of the bunch -- a colleague compared it to a five-year-old Japanese cell phone -- and the most difficult to use.

Casio Exilim
Styled like a thick clamshell, the Exilim's main screen flips around 180 degrees so it can lie flat and mimic a regular camera's LCD screen. Unfortunately, the tiny 2.3-inch screen must then be navigated with little buttons on the handset's side. This was often confusing and tedious.
One of the Exilim's few redeeming qualities: It was the only one I tried with optical zoom rather than digital zoom.
Another neat feature is its water-resistant body, which I tested by dunking the phone in a pitcher of water. Indeed, it still managed to take photos, though they came out a bit distorted.
I was able to take crisp photos, but I didn't think they were as bright as on some of the other handsets. Regardless, I quickly ran out of room for them on the phone, since there is very little internal memory and does not come with a memory card. (It has a microSD slot if you want to supply your own).

Zoom Power

Sony Ericsson C905a: With its 8-megapixel camera and pretty low price, the silver Sony Ericsson C905a ($180 from AT&T (NYSE: T) with a two-year contract and mail-in rebate or $50 from Amazon.com with a contract) is a fair option.
The handset is thick but compact, with a slide-out keypad on the bottom. There's no touch screen on the C905a, but there are plenty of buttons to help you along: Dedicated "scenes" and "shoot mode" buttons let you fine-tune the light settings and types of shots (you can take panoramas, for example, or add a frame around your pictures).
The C905a's 16x digital zoom was more helpful than I expected, and it seemed to work more fluidly and produce less blurry images than some other handsets. I was very impressed with the clarity of some photos I took, though the colors could have been a bit brighter.
If you like to snap shots quickly, the C905a may annoy you, though, as it doesn't have the quickest response time

Samsung Leaps Into Roiling App Store Arena

Samsung will open a mobile app store in Europe focused on its line of Omnia smartphones. Led mostly by Apple's App Store for iPhones and iPods, the mobile app marketplace bandwagon is being followed by device makers, mobile OS makers and wireless carriers alike. Such a wide variety, however, may mean each individual store will have a harder time convincing developers to jump onboard.

Korean electronics giant Samsung on Monday announced that it will launch a mobile application store in Europe on Sept. 14.
This follows the release of its mobile widget software development kit (SDK) around mid-August and its unveiling in July of the Samsung Application Seller Site, a portal geared toward mobile app developers and resellers.
Samsung's entry comes at a time when the mobile app market is getting pretty crowded. Will it succeed?

Samsung's Mobile App Store

Samsung will roll out the app store in the UK, France and Italy first, according to reports. It will then launch the store in another 30 countries over the coming months.
The apps will reportedly be written for Samsung's Omnia smartphones. Users will initially be able to select from about 300 apps, including games and e-readers. This will increase to about 2,000 by the end of the year.
Omnia owners will have to download a software upgrade to access the apps on the site.
Samsung unveiled updates to its Omnia handset line at the CommunicAsia information and communication technologies expo held in Singapore in June. These included the Omnia II and the OmniaPRO B7610.

Other Mobile App Store Moves

In July, Samsung launched the Samsung Application Seller Site, a portal for developers and resellers. This will license third-party companies to sell Samsung apps.
It includes links to Samsung Mobile Innovator, a site for developers for the Windows Mobile, Symbian and Java platforms.
About mid-August, Samsung unveiled the mobile widget SDK (software developer kit) for its TouchWiz user interface on Mobile Innovator. This SDK will let developers create widgets for different Samsung phones using different operating systems, including the company's own proprietary OS.
The Samsung Mobile Widget SDK is built on the open source Eclipse platform. Samsung will host its first Widget Developer Camp at the Hyatt Regency hotel in San Francisco September 11 through 13.

Nokia Expo Ushers In Fresh Phones, Facebook Features

Nokia World 2009 set the stage for a handful of new cellphones from the world's biggest handset maker. The N97 mini is a smaller version of the original N97, while the X6 and X3 are designed with music in mind. Nokia also named a price for its Booklet 3G and announced new smartphone integration features with social networking site Facebook.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) on Wednesday unveiled three new smartphones at Nokia World 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany.

It also announced a partnership with Facebook through its Lifecasting With Ovi application.
One smartphone, the N97 mini, is targeted at women, IDC analyst Ramon T. Llamas told TechNewsWorld.
The other two, the X6 and X3, are aimed at maintaining Nokia's position in the mid-range smartphone market.
Lifecasting With Ovi will be available on the N97 mini.

Going for Girl Power

The N97 mini was designed with the social and style-conscious consumer in mind, Nokia said. It has a tilting 3.2 inch display; a QWERTY keyboard and a customizable home screen.
A Facebook widget on the home screen will detect the user's location and let users update their status or profile on the social networking site and do other things through Lifecasting With Ovi.
The N97 mini comes with Ovi Maps. It supports most POP3/IMAP mail clients. Instant messaging clients supported include those from Nokia, Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) , Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) .
Other features include a built-in Flash player for Internet access, a 5 MP (megapixel) built-in camera with dual LED flashes and, for music, a built-in equalizer and Bluetooth access. The N97 mini has 8 GB of on-board memory, expandable to 24 GB with a microSD card.
The N97 mini is smaller than the N97, and IDC's Llamas says this is a thinly veiled attempt to target a female demographic. "When you market a product to women, you pink it or shrink it," he said. However, "the original N97 wasn't too big or clunky."
The Nokia N97 mini is scheduled to ship in October. Its suggested retail price will be just over 450 euros (US$642).

The iPhone's Gaming Growing Pains

The iPhone 3GS sports a better processor than its predecessor, the 3G, which makes the new handset an even more muscular platform for mobile gaming. However, most iPhone users still have an older 3G or first-gen model, and the cost of developing an advanced game necessitates a large customer base. How long will developers wait to build graphics-heavy, 3GS-exclusive games?

Consider the juice inside a hot new portable gaming device: It has a speedy processor, a powerful graphics chip, plenty of memory and wireless capabilities for instant downloads. You can play the latest blood-soaked first-person shooters like "Resident Evil," dizzying platformers like "Assassin's Creed" and some killer racing games that don't even require punching combinations of buttons and triggers; just lean the device this way or that, thanks to a built-in accelerometer, and you're careening down boulevards at top speeds in a shiny red Ferrari.
If you want, you can also make a phone call on it.
The iPhone 3GS is the best argument yet for those who say smartphones will eventually replace notebook computers as full-service portable communications/entertainment devices, and the ability to play is becoming a big part of its consumer appeal. "Games are certainly one of the most popular applications categories in the App Store," Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe said. "Clearly there is a lot of gaming interest."
However, is there enough of that interest to make gaming the major impetus for iPhone sales ? That interest isn't just among consumers who will use their iPhones to kill time on their flight home by playing "Hero of Sparta;" developers for those games dream of taking advantage of the 3GS' tech specs by loading up new offerings with rich graphics and animation; but can they afford to develop those games for the new, beefed-up iPhone if there aren't yet enough of them in consumer's hands?
"It's hard to predict if a game that costs twice as much to develop is going to sell enough copies to recoup the development investment, which is why install base is often factored into a game's green-light decision," game developer Corey Dangel said. "Lessons leaned on the PC side indicate that unless you're selling a game engine, like 'Doom,' 'Unreal' or 'Half-Life,' you want to keep your minimum specifications very approachable. Developers have learned that living on the bleeding edge, while sexy, is not all that lucrative."