Redfly Mobile Companions now play nicely with BlackBerrys

Alright, BlackBerry owners, don’t rush all at once. I know you probably wanna get in on the Redfly mobile companion game but we need to remember to act civilized. It’s understandable that you’re excited that Redfly can now kick it with BlackBerrys along with Winmo phones, but don’t flood the servers all at one time.

The latest Redfly update isn’t really a surprise. The company announced BlackBerry support was coming, but we just didn’t know when. But with the update, the Redfly C8N and C7 can now extend the desktop of the BlackBerry Bold 9000, Curve 8900, and Tour 9630 to the Redfly’s 800×480 resolution display. Oh, and the update is free. Just don’t push and shove to get it.

Sirius XM SkyDock: The satellite radio that uses your iPhone’s interface

Satellite radio fans! The Sirius XM SkyDock, first revealed a few months ago, is now available at wherever you buy your equipment. It’s a fully functional radio, but one that uses your iPhone (or iPod touch) as the interface. That is to say you’re iPhone isn’t the radio, but rather the interface for the SkyDock itself.

I haven’t used it, of course, but Orbitcast did, and Mr. Orbitcast himself seemed to like it, saying that “If you are one of the millions who own an iPhone or iPod Touch and prefer a clean install, this is the radio for you.”

High praise, yes.

The SkyDock, which retails for $119, works with every model of the iPhone and iPod touch, provided you’re running OS 3.0 or higher.

Sony Ericsson tease the crowds with an XPERIA X10 video

Heating up the expectations for the XPERIA X10 announcement next Tuesday (3 November), Sony Ericsson have just published a teaser video of their upcoming Android uber smartphone.

We recently reported on the new Sony Ericsson landing promo page that mysteriously appeared to arouse the interest of the general public about an upcoming announcement on 3 November. We know for sure that this is when Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 will get its official unveiling after so many leaks such as this.

Now Sony Ericsson have added a promo video to that page as a sneak peak to what's coming. Here's it:

 

If you've lived on a foreign planet the last several months, we'll remind you that the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 (previously rumored as Rachael and XPERIA X3) is Sony Ericsson's first Android smartphone.

The XPERIA X10 is based on a blazing fast Snapdragon CPU and has a 4-inch display and an 8 megapixel

N-Gage is dead, long live the Ovi Store - full of Symbian games

Nokia plans to shut down the N-Gage platform. It's all going down in September 2010 but the publishing of new games has stopped as we speak. The gaming on Nokia phones will continue evolving under the Ovi Store umbrella.

The website of N-Gage along with the N-Gage Arena community will be left running throughout the whole 2010, while the N-Gage store will continue selling games until September 2010. After that the only place to buy S40 or Symbian S60 games will be the Ovi Store, which will come preinstalled on all upcoming Nokia devices. Nokia also promises to bring similar community options for the apps in the Ovi Store.

Of course, all the N-Gage games you've purchased so far will continue to work long after that.

Well, the N-gage platform delivered some of the best mobile games we've seen for Symbian smartphones and we're quite surprised that Nokia is ditching all the development losing a strong differentiating factor. We'll see how it goes, let's hope it is all for the better.

Nokia disengages N-Gage

Last year we reported that Nokia took the brand for its unsuccessful handset and turned it into a new mobile gaming service. Now it seems that the N-Gage gaming service has been as successful as the previous handset of the same name with Nokia announcing on its N-Gage Blog that it will shut down operations of its gaming service next year.

In its place, mobile games will be sold through the company’s Ovi Store. Games may continue to be purchased until the end of September 2010 with community features staying open for the remainder of the year. Also, do not look for any new games since the company announced it will offer no additional titles for the N-Gage platform. New Nokia devices will also no longer ship with the N-Gage application pre-installed.

No doubt N-Gage has been a big disappointment for Nokia and it feels there are better revenue streams available through its Ovi Store. You have to feel sorry about the N-Gage brand, though. It will no doubt have the mark of death going forward. I do not expect we will ever see the N-Gage brand again and it will probably be put in the same grave as the mobile gaming platform.

Instant translation: Jibbigo Spanish-English translator works in real time

Can you even imagine what it must have been like to be an early explorer? Like, you leave Spain or Portugal on some rickety boat, and arrive in the New World. Cool and all, but, outside of shooting everything in sight, how do you communicate with anybody?

What, do you point to the sun and say “sol,” and expect the other guy to repeat “sol”? That can’t be an efficient way to learn a language, especially when it’s, you know, a very real clash of cultures. If only they had (drum roll, please) something like Jibbigo Speech Translator English Spanish, which automatically translates from Spanish into English, and vice-versa.

The $25 iPhone App will take what you say in either language, and spit out the other language in real time. So, say you’re Florentino Perez and need to communicate “fue una derrota muy humillante” to your English friends. Just say the phrase into the iPhone, and it’ll output, “it was a humiliating defeat.” Done and done.

There’s 40,000 phrases in there, so it should totally be sufficient when you’re trying to order some tapas.

Right now, Jibbigo only works with Spanish-English, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see copycats with other languages popping up.

Samsung Tocco Lite Overview

The best-selling phone in the first half of 2009 has probably been the LG Cookie. The secret to the Cookie's success is simple: it's a touchscreen phone with loads of gadgets for just £100. So now Samsung have released the Tocco Lite to go head to head against the Cookie for best budget touchscreen phone. Which phone will win in the Cookie vs Tocco Lite battle?

Well, the Tocco Lite is arriving on the scene 6 months later than the Cookie, so it should be 6 months ahead of the curve, and a clear winner. But in fact the specification is almost exactly identical to the Cookie, and the Tocco Lite is retailing at a slightly higher price, although this may fall in the weeks after launch. What then, is the point of the Tocco?

Physically, the two devices are exactly the same size, to within a millimetre! The screens are identical in type, size, colour definition and pixels. With a good size screen (3 inches) and high resolution, Samsung's TouchWiz user interface works well on the Tocco Lite. TouchWiz can now be regarded as a mature technology, and it seems to be pretty much universally popular. Mobile widgets let you customise your home screen and give easy access to apps such as the clock, weather forecast, etc. There are also widgets for popular web apps such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. The built-in accelerometer sensor will automatically rotate the screen when you turn the phone on its side, so you can easily switch between portrait and landscape modes. The virtual QWERTY keyboard is easy to use, and we think that you'll have no problems using the touchscreen. The addition of "real" keys for call, send and select make it even easier to use than a full touchphone. The user interface also supports handwriting recognition and gesture lock.

 

As we commented earlier, the spec of the Tocco Lite is virtually identical to the Cookie's. There's a 3.2 megapixel camera with digital zoom. Samsung's "Smile Shot" feature lets you take a photo when the camera thinks your subject is smiling. You can also edit your photos on the camera itself. A basic camcorder is available too. There's a music player, FM radio with RDS, and support for downloadable MP3 ringtones. Audio quality is good, with a virtual 3D surround effect, an equaliser and support for DNSe. The memory is similar to the Cookie's, and is expandable to 16GB with a microSD card. When it comes to connectivity, the Tocco Lite supports Bluetooth and USB. Like the Cookie, there's no WiFi and no 3G, which means that features like YouTube are going to be on the slow and jerky side. But remember that this is a budget phone - you can't have everything, and this seems like a reasonable compromise.

The web browser is very good, making excellent use of the large screen and with easy access to RSS feeds, Google Mail, Google Search and Google Maps. The lack of 3G does hamper the web browser though in terms of download speed.

Battery life seems to be pretty good. The Tocco Lite doesn't have the heavy duty battery of its big brothers, the Tocco or Omnia, but it has fewer gadgets to power, so it seems to be up to the job. Just don't expect it to last as long as your ancient Nokia and you'll be OK.

Taken on its own terms, the Tocco Lite is a fabulous phone. Whilst it lacks some of the features of high-end phones (3G, GPS, 8 MP camera, WiFi, etc), it does offer a lot for your money: a beautiful touchscreen user interface with 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo FM radio with RDS, accelerometer sensor, handwriting recognition and up to 16GB microSD expandable memory. It's available at launch with some fabulous contract deals: free line rental, or free gifts such as an XBOX 360, etc, and it comes in a choice of pink or black. The big question for many will be whether to choose the Tocco Lite or the LG Cookie. We have struggled to find a real reason to prefer one over the other, and frankly we can't. It seems that Samsung have made a phone so similar to the Cookie that there's virtually nothing to choose between them. But don't get the impression that we dislike the Tocco Lite - quite the reverse. It's an excellent phone offering outstanding value. Whether you choose the Tocco Lite or the Cookie you'll be getting one of the best phone bargains of 2009. On balance, our user reviews seem to be giving a slightly higher score to the Tocco Lite.

Update: a minority of users have reported a problem with the audio cutting out every few seconds, so that you can't hear the caller. As far as we can tell this happens on O2 only. Mike B has a possible fix for this problem for O2 users: Try going to Menu - Applications - O2 - Get Settings. Install the settings you are sent and reset the phone. Since I did that, and received the settings for PAYG from O2 I haven't had any problems with calls, (at least for the last 2 days). Hope it helps ! Thanks to Mike B, and if you have tried this, please write a review to let us know how it worked. Please also report this problem if you experience it on any other network. John L has an alternative fix for O2 users: go to settings, network settings and for network mode select GSM 900/1800.

Features of the Samsung Tocco Lite include:

3.2 megapixel camera with digital zoom

Video recording (QVGA 15fps)

Display: TFT, 262K colours, 240 x 400 pixels (3.0 inches)

Music player (MP3/AAC/AAC+/AAC++/WMA formats)

Stereo FM radio RDS

64-voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones

Integrated handsfree speakerphone

Personal organiser functions

Memory: MicroSD memory card slot (up to 16GB)

Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1, USB 2.0

WAP 2.0, GPRS Class 10, EDGE

Quadband GSM

Size: 106 x 54 x 12 mm

Weight: 94g

Android 2.0 ported to the aging G1

Forget about updating your G1 to Motoblur, go all the way with a little Android 2.0 action. Hells yeah. The official Android update was ported to the G1 by some ambitious coders. Now, calm down until you see the video after the jump as the early build doesn’t exactly run all that well on the one year old phone. But you have to start somewhere.

Where are all the great Android games? The answer is simpler than we think

I was Tweeting with Michael Gartenberg last night about all the great Android games. After all, the Android Marketplace has so many great titles like Civilization Revolution, Canabalt, iShoot, and… oh… wait…

All kidding aside, the reason there is such a dearth of great games has to do with some programming choices in Android itself and it’s a problem that can – and should – be fixed before the Droid comes to market this November.

The real culprit behind the lack of Android apps isn’t lack of developer adoption or a difficult SDK – it’s the ludicrous 256MB limit on app storage for most current Android phones and Android 2.0 itself. The OS also does not support the installation of apps on removable storage like SD cards, further ruining chances for more effusive and expansive titles. Considering most apps are in the 10MB range we’re talking a max of 25 apps on a good day and about 5 on a bad one.

This limitation has existed since Android 1.0 and continues in Android 2.0. As this enlightening post notes, Myst for the iPhone runs 727MB, a little under a gigabyte. That’s right: Droid doesn’t even have enough space to allow you to render the well let alone let you into the rocket.

The Droid has 512MB of memory with half of that available to apps. More internal storage is definitely in order if Android can’t support external storage – an understandable move due to potential data corruption during an unexpected card removal – it definitely needs a bit more space under the hood in future models.

$30: Perfect-for-Google-navigation Motorola Droid car dock

The Motorola Droid, on Verizon Wireless, is, by all accounts, pretty OK. That’s fair to say, no? Yes, I believe it is. What’s lame, though totally to be expected, is that it’ll cost you $30 for a car kit. And you’d want said car kit in order to make that Google navigation application really fly.

The car kit places your Droid on your car’s dashboard; the Droid then enters a special car mode, which presents a simplified user interface. From here, you’d be able to slap on your Droid and let the it take you to the “varrazanne Bridge” in New York.

There’s also a second such dock, one that’s meant for your bedside. It turns your Droid into a grossly overpowered alarm clock. Well, it’s also for viewing movies and whatnot, but I’d rather eat glass than watch a movie on a phone.

And sorry the photo is rubbish, but I couldn’t find a higher-res one.

Original Body HTC Heros with US 3G coming soon – but you’ll have to import

If your pockets are just beggin’ to be filled with an HTC Hero, your options thus far (assuming you’re in the US) have been limited. You could get one through Sprint or wait for Verizon’s Hero-esque Droid Eris – but either of those options means you’re on a modified,

round-bodied Hero rather than the angled, chin-tastic Hero that nearly 70% of our readers prefer. You could import one of the original bodied Heros from the UK – but then you wouldn’t be able to get 3G on any US Carrier.

If you wanted US 3G and an original Hero, you were out of luck – until now.


Earlier today, a new product page for the HTC Hero popped up. The good news: It’s an original-body Hero, and its got the 850/1900mhz UMTS bands required for 3G on AT&T. The bad news: It’s headed for Telus in Canada. There’s a really, really solid chance that you’ll be able to get one of these across the border and get it unlocked and running on an AT&T sim – but that means you’ve gotta deal with an importer and the (generally not too painful) unlocking process. But it’s totally worth it if that means you’re the only kid on the block with a burly-bodied, 3G-totin’ HTC Hero, right?

Unboxing: The Verizon Droid by Motorola

John Biggs already gave the Verizon Droid a quick hands-on earlier today – but in the endless rush of things, he didn’t get a chance to walk it through a proper unboxing ceremony. Somewhat magically (albeit a bit later than we would have hoped), a Droid also happened to show up on my doorstep this morning, so I went ahead and captured the whole undressing for all to see. Enjoy!

More pics and facts about the new DROID by Motorola

Today is the International Day of the DROID. Well, not really, but Verizon did follow through and officially announced its new flagship Motorola Android device – DROID.

Along with the official presser, Motorola was also kind enough to provide some glistening press shots of the DROID, “A no-compromise supergenius” as they like to call it, along with an official DROID by Motorola Fact Sheet (all after the jump).

Hopefully these images and info will tide your DROID appetite over until we get our hands on posted later today.

 

 

DROID by Motorola Fact Sheet

A no-compromise supergenius

Introducing DROID by Motorola, a Smartphone powered by Android 2.0 developed in partnership with Google and Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest 3G network. DROID delivers high-speed Web, voice-activated search, a super large touch screen and thousands of customizable apps and widgets from Android Market™. With the thinnest full QWERTY slider available on the market, it’s a no-compromise supergenius in your pocket, multitasking at break-neck pace to get things done.

High-Speed Mobile Browsing

* See the Web at break-neck speed on the largest high-resolution display with a Flash 10 ready HTML browser.

* Look up favorite sites, video and music fast with a high-speed, cortex A8 processor and lightning-fast connection.

* View it all on the 3.7” display with more than 400,000 total pixels, which is twice that of the leading competitor.

* Work faster on the Web with double tap to zoom in and out.

Google Searches Beyond the Web

* Type your search to deliver results such as contacts and music offering a complete search experience on a mobile device.

* Use voice-activated search to serve up both your contacts and Google search results, based on your location.

* Find your way with free spoken turn-by-turn directions with Google MapsTM Navigation (Beta), with Street View and LatitudeTM. View geographic information, such as My Maps, Wikipedia entries and transit lines, right on the map.

Customize Your DROID

* Access thousands of applications and hundreds of widgets from Android MarketTM.

* Customize your home screen with preloads like Facebook™ and Google MapsTM or download1 applications for music, news, sports and games.2

* Toggle back and forth between up to six applications at a time.

Multitask Messaging

* Integrate work (Exchange) and personal (GmailTM) e-mails into one inbox with emails pushed directly to you. Plus, undo common operations in GmailTM for fast corrections.

* Find your contacts using a universal list that pulls in work, personal and Facebook™ contacts

* Slide out the full QWERTY keyboard to comfortably text, IM and e-mail1

* Have your work calendar right at your fingertips at all times

Additional Bells and Whistles

* DVD quality video recorder features quick and easy playback plus optimized YouTubeTM uploading for sharing with friends.2

* 5 megapixel camera loaded with the works like dual-LED flash, AutoFocus, and image stabilization

* Features 16GB of storage space (or upgrade to 32).

* Stereo Bluetooth® gives you the option of wireless connectivity3. Or if you prefer traditional, headphones utilize the 3.5mm headset jack.

* Easily copy text and URLs to simply paste them into an e-mail, text or status update1 or copy images off the Web directly to your gallery.

Optional Accessories

* Use the multimedia station5 to transform DROID into an alarm clock, movie player or digital picture frame.

* Place DROID in the car mount5 to instantly launch a full-blown GPS navigation device.

DROID by Motorola with Google™

Talk and Standby Time4 – TT: 385 mins/6.4 hours | SB: 270 hours/11.25 days

Form Factor – Capacitive Touch; Full Qwerty Side Slider

Band/Modes1 – 800/1900, CDMA EVDO rev A

OS – Android 2.0

Weight – 169 g / 6 oz

Dimensions – 60.00 (x) x 115.80 (y) x 13.70 (z) mm | 2.4 (x) x 4.6 (y) x 0.5 (z) inches

Browser1 – Webkit HTML5 based browser; Flash 10 ready

Email Support1 – GmailTM, Exchange, IMAP, POP, Macmail, GmailTM, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL®

Battery – 1400 mAh

Connectivity1 – Bluetooth® v2.1+EDR, 3.5mm Headset jack, USB 2.0 HS

Display – 3.7”, 480×854 WVGA

Display Resolution – WVGA display houses 400,000 pixels

Messaging1 – SMS/MMS, Full HTML5 Browser

Audio – AMR-NB/WB, MP3, WAV, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA

Video – Advanced Video record/playback at D1 resolution (720×480) with up to 24fps capture and 30fps playback, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264

Camera – 5.0 megapixel, AutoFocus, dual LED Flash and image stablization

Memory – 16GB card included in phone, Up to 32GB microSD expandable

Location Services1 – aGPS, sGPS

Extras – 802.11b/g, 3-axis accelerometer

DROID by Motorola with Google™ will be available in Q4 2009. For more information regarding pricing and product availability in your region, please contact your local Motorola representative. To experience DROID, please click here.

DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.

MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. The Bluetooth trademarks are owned by their proprietor and used by Motorola, Inc. under license. Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc. Google, YouTube, Picasa, Gmail, Google Earth, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Android, and Android Market are trademarks of Google, Inc. All other trademark and product or service names are the property of their respective owners. © 2009 Motorola, Inc. All rights reserved.

1Certain features, services and applications are network dependent and may not be available in all areas; additional terms, conditions and/or charges may apply. Contact your service provider for details

2 The unauthorized copying of copyrighted materials is contrary to the provisions of the Copyright Laws of the United States and other countries. This device is intended solely for copying non-copyrighted materials, materials in which you own the copyright, or materials which you are authorized or legally permitted to copy. If you are uncertain about your right to copy any material, please contact your legal advisor.

3 This device supports Bluetooth A2DP, AVRCP, HSP, HFP, PBAP, OPP profiles. In order for Bluetooth devices to communicate with one another, they must utilize the same Bluetooth profile. To determine the profiles supported by other Motorola devices, visit www.motorola.com/bluetooth. For other devices, contact their respective manufacturer.

Certain Bluetooth features including those listed may not be supported by all compatible Bluetooth-enabled devices, and/or the functionality of such features may be limited in certain devices, or by certain wireless carriers. Contact your wireless carrier about feature availability and functionality.

4 All talk and standby times are quoted in Digital Mode, and are approximate. Battery performance depends on network configuration, signal strength, operating temperature, features selected, and voice, data and other application usage patterns.

5 Accessory sold separately

Google Redefines GPS Navigation Landscape: Google Maps Navigation For Android 2.0

If you weren’t sure about switching to an Android phone in the near future, this might put you over the edge. Google Maps Navigation is an absolutely killer app. And it is only available for Android 2.0 phones.

Today is Droid day, and for the most part Google is taking a backseat and letting their partners get most of the attention. But Droid is the first Android phone to run Android 2.0, and Google Maps Navigation is clearly the early trophy app for those devices.

Google Maps already has 50 million active users across various mobile phones, says Google. But what users have today isn’t even close to the new Navigation product.

First off, it’s connected, which puts it ahead of all but a tiny percentage of in-car navigation systems which have no Internet connectivity (Dash is a notable exception).

 

The application is also completely free. So all those paid navigation apps (Navigon, TomTom, CoPilot, MapQuest, GoKivo and Sygic Mobile) are at an immediate disadvantage.

But even if Google charged for this app, it would still win hands down. The features include easy search (no need for address), voice search, traffic information (from data sources and crowd sourced from app), and street view close up pictures when you get near your destination. And the car dock mode gives bigger, simpler icons and auto-voice mode (see video):

Search in plain English. No need to know the address. You can type a business name (e.g. “starbucks”) or even a kind of a business (e.g. “thai restaurant”), just like you would on Google.

Search by voice. Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): “Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco”.

 

Traffic view. An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch on the indicator toggles a traffic view that shows the traffic ahead.

Search along route. Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.

Satellite view. View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.

 

Street View. Visualize turns overlaid on Google’s Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.

Car dock mode. For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm’s length.

Here’s Navigation in the Droid dock, followed by an image gallery for the app:
 

Video Demo Of Google Maps Navigation 

Official Google Navigation Video 

 

The Storm2 is now availble for masochists

In case you haven’t been paying attention around here the last few weeks, the BlackBerry Storm2 is now available for purchase. That is, of course, if you really want to spend $279 and then mail-in a $100 rebate for a mediocre phone. Personally I can think of a dozen and a half phones I would rather have at that price point. What you really should do is what a week or two until the Motorola Droid hits. That’s the VZW phone to have, not the Storm2.

In case you forgot: tomorrow is Droid Day

I don’t know how you could forget, considering we’ve been posting Droid updates just about every day, but according to our calculations, tomorrow is October 28th: the day Droid drops. Now, we don’t expect the Droid to set the mobile world on its head exactly, but we’re pretty sure that it’s going to be the premier Android device — until the next premier device comes out.

The combination of better hardware, better software, and a slim form factor gives it a leg up on pretty much every other Android device out there, unless you want the non-hardware keyboard, in which case the Hero is your best bet.

We expect something to go live at midnight, and then an announcement in the morning, probably of an actual release on November 6. We’ll have our hands on one in short order and post hands-on impressions ASAP. If you have any questions or concerns in particular (keyboard, screen brightness, that sort of thing) feel free to leave them in the comments here and we’ll address them. As for other speculation and the AT&T version, well, we’ll soon find out, I suppose!

Global Phone Number Provider iNum Brings HD Voice Calling To Skype

Tomorrow at the eComm Europe 2009 event, Brussels-based provider of international VoIP origination services and telephone numbers Voxbone will be officially announcing that its global phone number service iNum now supports high-definition voice calling between Skype (which now boasts over 521 million users worldwide) and dozens of VoIP networks.

Voxbone will be transcoding between Skype’s wideband SILK codec and the HD codec G.722, with support for additional codes planned for the future. In the end, Voxbone says it wants to turn the technology into the sound quality standard for VoIP and “eventually all telephony”.

For your background: iNum is short for “international Number”. Think of it as a geographically-independent phone number that lets you use the same number all around the word, instead of needing to switch to a new number from a new supplier in case you move to a new country or stay in one for a long period of time. Here’s a list of current providers.

iNum makes use of the +883 global country code newly created by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). The startup received a first allocation of 100 million numbers from the organization last year.

Because iNum numbers can be dialed from PSTN phones (aka via the ‘plain old telephone system’) as well as IP endpoints, Voxbone’s move enables conference calls with attendees on conventional phones, who will hear within the PSTN’s audio constraints, and others with HD IP endpoints, who should enjoy a richer sound. Skype made its SILK super-wideband audio codec freely available last March.

We should note there is some industry criticism around the concept of ‘HD calling’, which at times gets billed as a fancy new term that doesn’t describe anything earth-shatteringly new or innovative and something which there is no demand for.

Mobile Web Usage Keeps On Growing, And Growing, And Growing …

Browser maker Opera has released its latest ‘State of the Mobile Web’ report this morning, claiming that there was a huge surge in mobile web usage past September.

Last month, more than 35.6 million people used Opera Mini (which is now serving over 500 million pageviews per day on average on a wide range of mobile devices), up 11.5% compared to August 2009 and more than 150% compared to September 2008. The Norway software developer also claims more than 2 petabytes of data is now processed by its servers on a monthly basis. That’d be 2,000 terabytes.

Data traffic through Opera’s mobile browser — which compresses up to 90% of the data to save network bandwidth – rose 8.7% in September compared to August, the company said. In total, it gained about 4 million new Opera Mini users in that same period of time.

Opera also said users in the top 10 countries (Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam) save up to $672 million USD per month, or over $8.1 billion USD per year, thanks to the compression rate of 90% and the subsequent savings in mobile data charges from users’ operators.

To calculate these numbers, which I question, Opera looked at the top operators in each country, determined how much they typically charge per MB of browsing, and averaged those figures together. The average cost of browsing in each country was then multiplied by the amount of traffic generated in each country, and the resulting totals were summed and compared to the totals for uncompressed data traffic. The big caveat: Opera’s survey only reflects metered rates (cost per MB) and not flat-rate subscription options, which skews the numbers in their favor.

The fact that mobile web usage continues to surge is hardly surprising, but Opera’s monthly reports reflect the rate of increase quite nicely on a monthly basis. Here’s a graph that shows the evolution as measured by data consumption:
 

T-Mobile goes unlimited + no contract with ‘Even More Plus’ plans

T-Mobile jumps feet first into the no-contract, unlimited everything arena with its new “Even More Plus” plans, ranging from $30 per month for 500 voice minutes to $80 per month for unlimited voice minutes, text messages, and internet access. Family plans are also available for between $50 and $140 per month.

It appears that you can choose from just about any available phone, although going with this no-contract option means that none of the handsets are subsidized. Prices range from $550 for the HTC Touch Pro 2 down to $60 for the Nokia 2330.

T-Mobile is also offering unlimited plans with a two-year contract as part of its “Even More” package, with monthly fees ranging from $40 for 500 minutes to $60 for unlimited minutes. It’s important to note, though, that these plans are only for voice minutes – you’ll need to add texting and mobile web packages a la carte at $10 per month each (for most handsets).

iPhone props go into mass production

In just about every other movie or TV show we watch, at least one of the characters (if not half the cast) is rocking the iPhone. For example: Have you seen Chuck? If not, you definitely should — it’s a great show — but it has more Apples than Granny Smith.

Sooner or later, one of these shows is going to have a reason to destroy an iPhone on camera. Up until now, the prop folks have only read had two options: Smash a real iPhone to pieces, or recreate the iPhone in one-off prop form. Depending on the size of the production, either of those options might be a bit too pricey. Enter: the iPhone dummy.

It looks like an iPhone. It smells like an iPhone. But it’s certainly not an iPhone. Recreated to look just like Apple’s finest, the iPhone dummy is a $20 substitute for smashing the hell out of the real deal. Of course, it doesn’t actually.. you know, power up – so you might burn up all that money you saved paying someone to composite stuff if you need onscreen activity. If you’ve got a need for a lifeless iPhone-lookalike, Check it out here – that is, if Apple’s IP guys haven’t gotten to it already.