Sprint is releasing their second 4G Android phone, the Samsung Epic 4G. Available as soon as August 31st at a cool price $250 (including a $100 rebate).
The Samsung Epic 4G comes equipped with a 1GHz Samsung Cortex A8 processor, Android 2.1 operating system, 4-inch Super-AMOLED capacitive display. It comes with a 3G/4G hotspot, 5-megapixel rear camera with auto focus, LED flash, 720p video recording, front-facing video camera for video chat, six-axis motion sensor and a 16GB microSD card.
If you’re worried about it being sold out, reserve one now starting August 13th and you don’t have to worry about the Sprint EVO-disaster like last time.
The physical specs:
• Dimensions: 4.9 inches x 2.54 inches x 0.56 inches (124.8 mm x 64.6 mm x 14.2 mm) (LxWxT)
• Weight: 5.46 ounces (155 grams)
• Battery: Standard removable 1500mAh Lithium (Li-on) battery
• Memory: 1 GB ROM, 512 MB RAM
Devices, Samsung 4g, amoled, android, capacitive display, cortex a8 processor, samsung epic 4g, sprint
Here are some interesting stats for the smartphone market.
Smartphones account for 25% of the mobile phone market.
RIM owns 33% of the smartphone market
Nokia saw a 41% increase in sales
But Android saw a 886% increase in sales
I’m very bearish on Nokia, Microsoft, and Blackberry at the moment but hopefully RIM launches a successful new update on it’s OS for 6.0 (gigaom)
Given that the U.S. currently has the largest smartphone user base — Canalys estimates 14.7 million smartphones were purchased in the U.S. last quarter — it’s easy to overlook the current king of smartphone sales globally: Nokia. In the second quarter of 2010, the Finnish phone-maker sold 23.8 million handsets. Nokia saw a 41 percent growth rate over the prior year’s second quarter sales, which sounds positive, but when compared to Android’s 886 percent gain, Nokia’s growth pales in comparison. The overall smartphone market is growing, which is lifting sales of nearly all. But some — like Android — are clearly growing far faster than others.
News android, blackberry, iphone os4, marketshare, microsoft, nokia, rim, smartphone market
Who’s to blame in this mess? China says it’s Google who’s pulling the plug on authorization while Google had no comment on the postponement. Expect to see more news on this as it unfolds into other business units within Google.
BEIJING — Google on Tuesday postponed the launch of two mobile handsets in China, one week after threatening to leave the Asian giant over cyberattacks and censorship, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
The US company said in a statement to Dow Jones that the phones featuring Google’s Android operating system and developed in cooperation with Motorola and Samsung had been scheduled to be unveiled Wednesday with China Unicom.
The California-based Internet firm did not specify when or if the launch would take place.
A person familiar with the situation told Dow Jones the company felt it would be “irresponsible” to release the phones at the current time given the current uncertainty.
Representatives of Google were not immediately available to comment when contacted by AFP.
China 1 : Google 1
News android, china, google
Nexus One - Google Phone on Android
Available online directly from Google.com itself, this phone will deliver a complete Android 2.1 experience to new users with a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Look out Apple, this phone is going to knock your socks off… There is no contract and the device will be priced accordingly. This is a similar model to Sony Ericsson and Nokia but who knows, Google might actually change consumer buying habits…
The phone, called Nexus One, was designed inside Google and will be sold, at least initially, without being subsidized by a wireless partner, these people said. It is the latest sign of the Internet giant’s ever-broadening wireless ambitions as Google hunts for ways to expand its Internet services beyond computers. The move, details of which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal on … - Wall Street Journal
Devices, HTC, Mobile Carriers, News android, Google Phone, HTC, Nexus One, Qualcomm, Snapdragon
With Apple’s resounding success in their App Store, major carriers and phone manufacturers are jumping on the app store bandwagon to avoid being a “dump pipe” or just another hardware manufacturer. With loads of new app stores and new ways to download applications, this is by far a better user experience than in the past than having to browse from a clunky interface on the web and syncing it on the phone or downloading it from unfamiliar and risky 3rd party sites.
Now with everyone and their mother implementing an app store, developers are the last piece of the puzzle to develop and fill up their catalog. But what carriers and new app store promoters don’t realize in the resounding success of Apple’s App Store is that it was on a narrow target of mobile phones and operating systems. This alone cuts down on the difficulty of the developer to develop and maintain a stable and worthwhile experience of applications so that the end-user aka customer can enjoy and return for more. With Windows Mobile, Symbian, Brew, Java, Android, Apple, Blackberry, and other OS’s, it gets pretty overwhelming to maintain and update across all these different operating systems. Let’s say you narrowly focus on two or three OS’s, Apple, WM, and Android, you not only cut yourself off from 50% of the market but you also expand the number of phones and screen sizes to develop for. Apple’s success was that it was a homogeneous product of devices (iPhone and iTouch) with little deviation between the two.
My advice to these new app stores, don’t try to preload every phone with access to the app store. Only preserve it for the higher end phones that can handle this and narrow down the hardware that it can work universally without having to pressure developers to program specifically around for a particular phone.
News android, app store, application, blackberry, brew, iphone, itouch, java, mobile, ovi store, windows mobile
Way to jump on the band wagon and get on board to compete with Apple and Android. Now with three platforms for consumers and developers to go crazy for, what’s not to love another “I am Rich” app for the BlackBerry side.
“Coming soon! Find tons of great applications designed for your BlackBerry® smartphone in one convenient place - BlackBerry App World™. Personalize your BlackBerry smartphone with games, social networks, personal productivity applications and so much more. Message your best friend, track the stock market, or channel your inner rock god. Sign up for BlackBerry App World today and discover how to put more of your life on your BlackBerry smartphone.”
Guess what? You need a PayPal account to buy any application… Lame
Blackberry, News android, android marketplace, app store, apple, apple app store, blackberry, blackberry app world, paypal, smartphone
Admob on iPhone
Lot’s of people can complain about the annoyances of ads on the computer but what happens when it starts getting on your mobile phone? Ever since Apple introduced the ever popular iPhone into the market, many developers have been looking for ways to monetize their work in other ways unlike traditional revenue sources. While many companies entered this space, one company grew apart from the rest and experienced double digit growth year after year. AdMob, one of the largest advertising marketplaces which signs up advertisers and publishers, said it had seen 6.8 billion network requests in January alone, driven by publishers who want to make money while giving away their content for nothing. But some critics disagree with mobile advertising as a successful marketing tool to reach consumers,”While we all believe in mobile advertising, we have to recognize that it hasn’t taken off as quickly as expected,” said Vodafone’s Vittorio Colao.
The problem with current mobile advertising techniques is that its not specifically targeted to a demographic (broadly). Google’s success in the desktop advertising space came about because it captured the users attention while they were searching for answers. Providing relevant key ads and integrating a rich framework of user data to target specific demographics really made google shine and perfect for advertisers to reach a higher ROI. I doubt AdMob can bring this level of scrutinty to its ad results but let’s just hope this market thrives since Google is well on its way to enter in this space with it’s roadmap of using Android as another platform for collecting user activity metrics and “COUGH* Android Desktop OS.
News admob, advertising, android, google, mobile advertising