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Tag: g1

  • HTC Forecasts 50% US Sales Growth


    Hot on the heels of launching its third Android smartphone, HTC is forecasting its US handset sales to grow by at least 50 per cent this year.

    With the arrival of the Hero, the Taiwanese phone maker is establishing itself as the leading manufacturer of the Linux-based devices.

    The release of the Hero follows the G1 and the myTouch3G.

    Jason Mackenzie, vice president of sales and marketing for HTC America, said this would help the company drive sales despite a smarphone market packed with rivals.

    Apple, Palm and Research In Motion have all recently launched new handsets – and other major mobile makers are expected to release Android phones this year.

    Mackenzie said HTC’s forecast sales growth would represent sales of around 6 million phones in the US this year.

    "Competitively we feel very good," he said.

    AT&T Mobility is seen as the carrier that will offer the Hero in the US this fall.

    It will be available on T-Mobile and Orange in Europe in July and in Asia by late summer.

    Similar in appearance to the G1, the Hero has an updated profile – no physical keyboard – and is based on a 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A processor.

    It also has two of the highly-in-demand features – a 3.5mm headphone jack and the multi-touch and fingerprint-proof 3.2" HVGA touch display (320 x 480).

    Other features include:

    • a 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen
    • 288 MB RAM
    • quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
    • 7.2 Mbps HSPA/WCDMA radios
    • Bluetooth 2.0
    • GPS
    • digital compass
    • gravity sensor
    • 5 megapixel camera
    • MicroSD slot

    HTC has also layered its own UI – known as Sense – over and above the Google-backed Android.

    This enables addition of gesture controls, widget support, and quick-launch icons for use in web-specific applications like e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.

    The Hero also supports Adobe’s Flash technology.

    While HTC’s Sense UI will be available on its non-Google branded Android devices, licensing terms prevent it being on any phone that’s got the "with Google" branding.

  • Android Market Reaches 40 Million Downloads


    T-Mobile G1 customers have downloaded on average more than 40 applications from Android Market.

    With one million G1s sold that adds up to 40 million downloads in total since the first Android handset was launched six months ago.

    The stats, which come from an interview T-Mobile gave to mocoNews, also show that among T-Mobile customers who’ve purchased a G1 around half traded up from a basic handset.

    Other details include:

    • Approximately 80 per cent of T-Mobile G1 users browse the web on a daily basis
    • The majority of T-Mobile G1 owners use Facebook and Youtube at least once a day and access Wi-Fi on a daily basis
    • Four out of five G1 customers download applications at least once a week

    While the figures pall when compared to the iPhones 500 million plus downloads, but it’s early days for the G1.

  • Android App Developers Get AdMob Option


    AdMob has announced that it has launched its first advertising unit for Android applications.

    The move by the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace will give developers an option for monetizing their applications on the open source device platform.

    The first developers to leverage AdMob’s new Android ad unit in their applications include AccuWeather, Jirbo, and TapJoy.

    AdMob’s presence will add another dimension to Google’s Android Market.

    While it now has more than 800 applications, that figure is dwarfed by Apple’s App Store, which has more than 15,000 apps.

    One reason for the gulf – aside from the fact Android only launched three months ago – is that Apple has the ability to offer paid apps.

    So the flood of developers rushing to the platform following the launch of T-Mobile’s G1 last October never happened.

    This is despite Google being seen as far less restrictive with regard to what apps could be created for Android.

    Android Market’s lack of a payment system is one reason.

    AdMob’s new Android ad unit will also allow brand and performance advertisers to reach consumers engaging with applications on their Android device.

    Advertisers will be able to use these ad units to drive customer actions such as going to the Android Market to download an application.

    AdMob already serves ads on mobile Web sites on the Android platform and received more than 27 million requests in December 2008.

    Building on the initial success of the G1 device, several new devices expected to come to market in 2009.

    More than 6,000 mobile sites and 450 iPhone applications are a part of AdMob’s publisher network worldwide.

  • Truphone Anywhere Launches on Android G1


    Truphone has announced its Truphone Anywhere application is now available for Android-enabled mobile handsets.

    The offering coincides with T-Mobile’s announcement earlier this week that the G1 mobile phone is be rolled out into various continental European markets.

    A German version of Truphone Anywhere for Android is being made available and will be the first native language multi-communications application in the Android Market in Germany and Austria when it launches at CeBIT in March.

    The application is available now as a download on the Android Market in the UK and the US.

    The company says Truphone Anywhere for Android delivers an all-in-one conversations hub that offers customers low international call rates, in addition to the cost of a local call.

    Truphone customers can also Instant Message their friends across a variety of networks including MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk and Twitter from within one Android application.

    Users can acces Google Talk for the price of a local call, and similarly will soon will be able to Instant Message and call their friends on Skype.

    The launch means that Truphone is now available on Android, the Apple iPhone, the Apple iPod touch, Blackberry and Nokia devices.

  • T-Mobile to take G1 into continental Europe


    Various countries on the European continent are in line to get the HTC G1 following its October launch in the UK and US.

    T-Mobile is continuing the roll-out of the handset – the first to run Google’s Android operating system – with a launch in Germany on 2 February.

    That follows the arrival of the touchscreen device in the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Austria before the end of 30 January.

    It will also hit Poland sometime in February.

    T-Mobile chief executive Hamid Akhavan said the G1 had sold "several hundred thousand" units in the US, where it retails for USD $179 with a two-year contract.

    In Germany the phone will sell from USD €1 on a two-year contract.

    The Android operating system is expected to appear on a number of smartphones in the next 12 months, having won support from major manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Huawei and Motorola.

  • G2 Software Issues Delay Launch


    There has been plenty of speculation that the launch of the next Google Android-powered handset is just days away.

    That appears to be premature according to BGR, which claims the launch has in fact been delayed until April due to "software issues".

    Among the other unconfirmed details gleaned are that the T-Mobile G2 will actually launch on another global carrier as well.

    Since the "G" names are trademarks of T-Mobile the other carrier will use its own name for the device.

    BGR also reports that the new handset will be full touch without a physical QWERTY keyboard and will have a trackball at the bottom.

  • Motorola Commits To WinMo And Android


    Motorola is to discontinue making phones for Symbian and will instead concentrate on two new platforms: Windows Mobile and Android.

    Sanjay Jha, CEO of the Mobile Devices group at Motorola, confirmed what had until now been rumors to Michael Oryl of MobileBurn.

    Motorola’s stake in Symbian was in UIQ, a part of the OS being cut following Nokia’s decision to move to an open platform.

    A leading force in the US smartphone market, Motorola has seen it position threatened of late.

    In November, Apple’s iPhone overtook Motorola’s Razr to become the best-selling consumer cellphone in the US in the third quarter of 2008.

    Motorola is now expected to postpone any product launches until the end of 2009 to allow it to prepare its new Android devices.

  • Second Android Smartphone Arrives


    Australia-based Kogan Technologies has announced it is to begin selling two Android handsets from next month.

    The Agora and Agora Pro models will be the second phones to be launched – after T-Mobile’s G1 – with the open-source operating system.

    Similar in appearance to classic BlackBerry smartphones, the Agora’s will come with 3G connectivity, a 2.5-inch LCD, a 320×240-pixel touchscreen, a five-way central navigation key, a microSD slot, a QWERTY keyboard with backlighting, and Bluetooth 2.0.

    Functions include Google Search, Gmail, the YouTube video player, Google Maps, Google Talk, and Google Calendar, as well as support for a variety of video, audio and mail-attachment formats.

    The Pro version, which also has a two-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, and GPS, will work on networks around the world.

    Due for release on 29 January, both models can be preordered from Kogan’s web site. The standard Agora is priced at about USD $194, while the Pro version will cost about USD $399.

    Although with similar specs to the G1 and very reasonably priced, it remains to be seen whether consumers will put their faith in a little known brand.

    What is certain is that if Kogan can bring what appears to be a well put together Android handset to the market, others will be able to do so too.

    Hopefully that means 2009 will see more new Android smartphones coming online.

  • Opera Mini Updated And Working On Android


    The final release of the Opera Mini 4.2 browser is now available – and it works on Google’s Android phone.

    Opera Mini 4.2 is the first browser alternative for the Android platform, which comes preloaded with Chrome light.

    Already known for its fast internet access, Opera claims this has increased in speed by more than 30 per cent for users in the US since the previous beta version launched.

    It says the improvemnt is largely due to the opening of a new Opera Mini server park in the US – the Java ME-based browser works by rendering pages on a server and then sending them to the device, so reducing the connectivity demands of the phone.

    As well as being available for the T-Mobile G1 – as a download from the Android Market – Opera Mini also works with some Blackberry and Windows Mobile handsets.

    Opera reports that 21 million unique users browsed five billion pages using the Opera Mini beta in October 2008 alone, totaling a 490 per cent increase since October 2007.

    Other improvements to Opera Mini 4.2 include:

    • More than 90 language versions, including the recently added Amharic, Armenian, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kirghiz, Lingala, Marathi, Malayalam, Mongolian, Oriya, Punjabi, Pashto, Sinhala, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Uzbek, Khmer, Kashmiri, Lao and Turkmen
    • Funky new skins for personalizing the look of Opera Mini
    • Opera Link support for notes, allowing users to sync their notes between the PC and Opera Mini
    • Improved real time streaming protocol (RTSP) handoff. This increases the number of phones with support for mobile video.

  • JAJAH Available For T-Mobile G1


    JAJAH has confirmed the availability of its service for owners of the newly released T-Mobile G1 Google Android phone.

    The announcement came as the IP communications company was named in the annual FierceVoIP "Fierce 15" list.

    Compiled by the editors of FierceVoIP, the list identifies the best-performing companies in the sector, following a review of hundreds of organizations.

    JAJAH has continued increasing its consumer business this year, while rolling out its JAJAH Managed Services platform for cable, telco and Internet companies.

    Earlier this year the company released its data-only EM-ONE ultra mobile device released in Japan, and JAJAH Babel, the world’s first free, real-time, English-Chinese translation phone-in service.

    Daniel Mattes, JAJAH’s co-founder, said its platform drives its own consumer business as well as many of the world’s most popular VoIP services, such as Yahoo! and Gizmo5.

    JAJAH’s is offering users of the G1 phone have a number of options for making a JAJAH call:

    • Option 1) JAJAH Mobile Web: On your mobile browser go to mobile.jajah.com, then type in the number you want to call or select the number in your JAJAH address book and your call will be connected. No WiFi or broadband connection required.
    • Option 2) JAJAH Direct: JAJAH provides a local number for each of your international contacts. Save these numbers to your G1 address book and dial them directly.