Smartphone Experts–Smartphone Fan

Today Vodafone has updated their “Coming Soon” page for the Nexus One to “Coming Soon/April”. From looks of it, it could be a mistake. Why put up an April release in the last days of April? It has been almost four months now that Vodafone customers have been waiting for the Nexus so if this is true you can possibly put in your order today.

I checked the Google phone page and it still says coming this spring. This phone will likely get the same subsidized treatment as the T-Mobile version. So whenever it is available get ready to get locked in for a specified amount of time, that isn’t a bad thing trust me, it’s a great handset and it will guaranteed get the rumored 2.2 before every other device.

Don’t break your neck heading over there just yet. We all would love to get our hands on this phone, and the price can’t be beat. It’s free and this offer comes with a few other perks.

You have to sign up as a Sprint Premier customer to win. The winners will not only get the phone for free but they will have it before it hit shelves. Sprint will also give away a job as a Sprint blogger, a “4G trip” or just cold hard cash. The winners will also receive a free year of service. To be a Sprint Premier Customer click this link, register and explain why you should be the winner in a 150 words. Good luck.

Would you like some kind of confirmation as to when you’re going to get some Android 2.1 goodness on your Sprint Android-based devices? You know the ones: the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment. Well, looks like we can finally put ourselves to some type of ease, as we’ve just seen an internal Sprint screenshot that details (without much detail) the upcoming release of the Android 2.1 upgrade.

We can also pretty much confirm that Sprint wanted to give the upgrade to the two Android handsets on its network at the same time. For whatever reason, they apparently wanted to make it reasonably fair for everybody. In any event, as you can see from the images herein, Sprint is saying that the upgrade to Android 2.1 for both the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment will be coming in early May. We’ll assume that’s the first week, but we could also see somewhere in the second week, too.

Those of you out there sitting on your hands, waiting every day for some kind of update to hit your phones should probably relax now. You’ve always known the update is coming, but now you can have some solace knowing it won’t be this month. So, start enjoying your phone as they are, because here soon they’re going to get a nice face lift. Excited?

This is a great accomplishment for Android. The market is growing faster than most of us anticipated. This was revealed during this afternoon’s Q1 earnings press conference, Jeff Huber who is  Google’s senior VP of engineering. Also, Google views the Nexus One as a “profitable business” even though most analyst feel it didn’t sell enough units overall.

Android use is up 70 percent from last quarter, and there are reportedly 60,000 Android phones sold every day in the world. The popularity of Android coupled with the ease of app development is attracting more and more developers to the platform. Developers have more freedom over Android than they do over other platforms(iPhone’s in particular). These number will continue to grow at a fast pace so expect more great apps soon.

Read the rest here:
There are 38,000 Apps Are in The Android Market

Twitter’s Evan Williams has recently revealed that the company plan to shortly offer an official Android application for the microblogging network.

The announcement was made at the Twitter Chirp conference, but it isn’t yet clear whether Twitter are planning to acquire an existing Android app (like they recently did with the iPhone Tweetie app), or whether they’d prefer to partner with a developer or mobile device maker  and create the app from scratch.

Twitdroid and Seesmic’s Android application are currently among the most popular Twitter clients for Android phones.

Looks like Intel is late to their own party. We’ve seen Android running on x86 CPU’s numerous times before. Intel has recently announced plans to enter the Android game. They are the leading CPU manufacturer and are now looking to take a cut into ARM’s profit.

Intel already has Android running on Atom-based smartphones and certain customers are interested in using it, said Renee James, general manager of Intel’s software and services group, on the sidelines of the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing.

Most of their leg work has been done by other companies. Intel is hoping these Atom-based Android devices will be a huge hit. With their track record, I expect nothing less than greatness from them and their products. We may start to see these devices soon since they have some working products. The ninja spy shots should start to pop up soon.

This is good news and bad news. The Galaxy S is one of the most powerful Android handsets to be released in the near future. It will most likely be the phone to have for gaming, as it stands it has the best GPU out of all the current Androids and every other handset. Time for the bad news, it passed through the FCC with AT&T 3G bands.

This device features an AMOLED display with 800 x 480 resolution, 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel rear-facing camera with support for 720p HD video recording at 30fps, front-facing VGA camera, Swype keyboard, HSDPA connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Wi-Fi, microSD expansion (16GB included, up to 32GB supported), and Android 2.1. The main highlight is the Hummingbird GPU that is capable of producing graphics that can rival those found on an XBOX 360 PS3.

We all would love to see this thing come stateside but for any carrier other than AT&T. They have a track record of locking down their Android devices and replacing some of Google’s apps with their own bloatware. Hopefully they will leave this device as is, most likely they are going to mess this device up also.

[via BGR]

Foursquare for Android has been updated, this update now gives you the ability to check your friend’s “mayorship” and adds startup options. Personally, I have no use for this app but it is one of the most popular apps in the mobile world. If you have a foursquare account, and a charger handy, this is app uses your phones GPS constantly, dive in and start you’re sharing(stalking).

Market Description:

“Foursquare helps you find new ways to explore your city. See where your friends are, learn about the places they frequent and unlock rewards as you travel.

“Latest Release: Check mayorships, choose startup tab (Friends or Places) and more – check Preferences -> Changelog for more details!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has revealed that Google are indeed working on their own Android powered tablet computer to rival the iPad.

According to a report by the New York Times, Schmidt broke the news to a group of friends at a recent party in LA. The article also goes on to add that Google have already contacted a number of publishers in regards to delivering content for the platform.

Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, told friends at a recent party in Los Angeles about the new device, which would exclusively run the Android operating system. People with direct knowledge of the project — who did not want to be named because they said they were unauthorized to speak publicly about the device — said the company had been experimenting in “stealth mode” with a few publishers to explore delivery of books, magazines and other content on a tablet.