Smartphone Experts–Smartphone Fan

The upcoming Streak from Dell, we all know it as the Mini 5, has a few services  from Amazon preinstalled. One of which is a Kindle app.  Amazon’s MP3 store is expected since that’s already on several Android devices. On a promo picture for the Streak is has “Kindle Book Reader Applications” listed as well as a few other apps. Could Dell’s Streak  usher in Amazon’s digital book reader to Android? There’s already a Kindle app for Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry platforms for mobile e-book reading.

The XDAndroid project, for Windows Mobile devices with (W)VGA displays, has progressed to a fully usable port of Android to a Touch Pro 2. Past ports haven’t been as successful as this one, there were too many bugs and the build was not user friendly. That’s now a thing of the past and maybe now all WinMo phones with a WVGA display will be able to load Android and use it like it was the native OS on the device. This hack has working calls, SMS and data. Click the links below if you want to try them out on your phone. Android on HTC Windows Phones: • Touch Pro2 (GSM) • Touch Pro2 (CDMA – must take SIM card out) (thanks MrPippy) • Touch Diamond2/Pure • Touch HD • Touch Pro/Fuze (GSM) • Touch Pro (CDMA) • Touch Diamond (GSM) • Touch Diamond (CDMA) Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s no surprise that Vodafone are set to offer the Google Nexus One , what we haven’t known so far is when it might be arriving or how much the Android 2.1 smartphone will cost.  Still no figures or exact dates, but Vodafone UK have updated their Coming Soon page with a “ register for updates ” option for the Nexus One. So far all the listing says is that the Nexus One is coming soon, though we previously heard from a UK paper that the launch would take place in April 2010

We’ve been hearing a few success stories about Android developers in recent weeks, and the latest to trumpet their achievements is Snaptic .  The company is claiming almost 2,000,000 active installs, in no small part thanks to Android’s Intent functionality which allows developers to combine functionality of other applications. In that way, Snaptic’s note-taking functionality has been integrated with the BBC’s News app, together with various recipe, dictionary, horoscope and other apps.  The app allows for text and media to be snipped from those apps and saved in a user-specific database, which is sync’d in cloud-based storage and accessible via a website. Snaptic now say they’re adding in new developer functionality in the latest version of their Notes API, with more news coming out of SXSW this weekend

The Galaxy Spica has been in the news often in the past few weeks. Earlier in the week there was an announcement that the handset was on its way to Roger’s Wireless in Canada. Today, a short video demonstration was released. The Galaxy Spica offers a 3.2? AMOLED HVGA capacitive display, 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3.6Mbps HSDPA/UMTS, 800MHz processor and up to 7 hours of talk time and 10 days of standby. It has Android 1.5 preinstalled with the promise of being updated to 2.1 in the future. That may come sooner then expected, although in the video it seem pretty unresponsive or maybe because its two guys trying to demo the same device. Click here to view the embedded video

The guys over at Engadget has gotten some leaked information on the upcoming Motorola i1. The camera will not be the previously suspected 3MP but a 5MP and Opera Mini has been tapped as the i1’s default browser. If this is true this will be the second Android device not to include one of Google’s core Android apps. Surprisingly enough, like the first, this is also a Motorola Blur device. Anyone getting suspicious yet? Maybe Motorola and Google are having a behind the scenes disagreement. But, once again MotoBlur is not a “Google Experience” phone so it can be modified to the carriers liking.