Amazon is continuing its streak of offering devices for the extremely low price of a single US cent, this time putting the Motorola Droid 2 up for sale at the price. For a measly 1/100 of a dollar and a new two-year contract the phone can be all yours. You will need to add the item to your cart to see the price, and it looks like you will also qualify for free shipping. That’s a savings of $199.98 from what you would pay through Verizon.

It kind of makes you want to hold off an initial smartphone purchase at launch knowing it may very well go up for a cent through Amazon. No clue how long the deal will last, so if you are thinking about it you may want to jump in quick.

In what is the exact opposite of what wireless operators and government have stated before, the wireless trade association 4G Americas, is claiming that text messaging is NOT reliable in case of emergency. Or at least that’s the way Rethink Wireless reports it, inaccurately in my opinion with the misleading headline “SMS cannot be trusted for emergency communications”.

The wireless trade association, 4G Americas, has warned of the risks of relying on SMS or instant messaging to contact emergency services, an issue it says is increasingly urgent for safety and cellular groups.

In a white paper called ‘Texting to 911: examining the design and limitations of SMS’, the body says there is a “perception that SMS is reliable; however SMS was never designed as a reliable means for life saving critical communications”. It has similar reservations about instant messaging, MMS and other varieties of ‘texting’ such as Twitter.

… “Today, voice 911 communication is the best and most reliable method of reporting an emergency and summoning help quickly. The industry is working on developing a reliable, non-voice solution to contact emergency services that is not based on SMS.”

This solution is called Non-Voice Emergency Services (NOVES) and is being developed by various north American safety organizations plus wireless groups like 3GPP. This could be applied to other countries too.

Here is what we’ve been told over and over again until this day:

Text messaging can be a fast, efficient and reliable way to communicate in the event of an emergency, it doesn’t clog cellular lines lines as much as voice calls. And, if more wireless users rely on text messaging in crisis situations, the people who need to make voice calls the most – emergency responders and 911 callers – can get through more easily.

Here’s a more accurate press release. The bottom line? Sending data by text could be made more efficient than the actual SMS system in emergency situations so the Wireless industry is working on a new and different text messaging system.

The industry is working on developing a reliable, non-voice solution to contact emergency services that is not based on SMS.” The report notes that there are substantial limitations inherent in the design of the current Short Message Services which make it impractical to be used for emergency service.

No priority or special handling is given to SMS messages, so a potential emergency message would contend with the millions of other messages being processed at any given moment.

– SMS is not a real-time communications service. SMS messages is “store and forward” and thus may have a delayed delivery, may be delivered in a different order than the sender intended, or may be lost or discarded.

– SMS was not designed with security mechanisms.

Read more.

Android 2.2 (v2.25.771.1) will begin its push to HTC Desire handsets on the UK carrier Three tomorrow, October 14th, according to the mobile provider. They are so ready to push the update that they have its launch pinned down to an exact hour (now that’s something you don’t see everyday). That time would be 9AM when you can begin to feverishly refresh your “System Updates” menu item until Froyo descends from the Android heavens unto your Desire.

[via AndroidCommunity]

Evernote is continuing development on their note-synching and productivity app, and they’ve recently announced that the latest version – 2.0 – is in beta. The best thing about this announcement is that you can go and grab it from their site right now to try it out for yourself. They warn that – because this is beta software  - you’re at risk of losing any notes you take with this app. I wouldn’t bet on that happening, but a warning is a warning. So just what can you expect upon installing that .apk file? Glad you asked.

Take a nice look at this long laundry list of changes before heading over there to get your fix. (Remember that the file does not automatically update when Evernote releases a new version. You’ll need to make your way back to this page to download any future updates.) [via AC]

What’s new in Evernote 2 Beta
The Evernote 2 Beta is an almost total rewrite of Evernote for Android, here’s an overview:

Great new user interface
You’ll immediately notice our new, more intuitive home screen, which allows you to make notes, gives you a great snapshot of the things you have in your account and shows synchronization status.

Easier sorting and browsing
We made browsing notes, tags and notebooks much easier. You can group your notes by notebook, location, or month and use the scroller to switch between sections. Note sorting happens lickity-split and even works offline. You can also press and hold on any of the notes in a note list to quickly access options like edit, delete, note info, email or tagging.

You’ll noticed that we’ve changed the interface, adding a convenient header bar to make it easy to switch among searches, notes, tags, and notebooks.

Dramatically faster
Evernote 2 Beta dramatically improves browsing, viewing and searching through notes by downloading all data about your notes, such as tags, notebook names, saved searches, note titles, and thumbnails when you first launch the app. It will also do this periodically in the background to make sure you’re always up-to-date (only available on Android).

In addition, whenever a note is viewed or created on the device, it will be stored offline for easy access even when there is no network connectivity. This feature is available for both free and premium users.

The initial sync may take some time, so we recommend connecting your phone to a power source and turning on WIFI.

Offline notebooks for Premium users
Premium users get even more. If you have an Evernote Premium account, then you will be able to specify the notebooks that you want to be saved for offline viewing. Evernote will then download all the notes contained in those notebooks, including any attached images and files, and saves them all onto your device’s SD card.

Simpler note creation and multiple attachments
Creating new notes is now much more powerful, allowing you to attach as many images, PDFs or audio files as you’d like. In the new note and note editing screens, use the buttons in the header to add a picture, assign tags, switch notebooks, or pull in data from other application or your local files. We still have the quick snapshot note.

Sharing from other apps
You can capture information in other apps on your Android and send them to Evernote using the sharing option. We’ll grab the info and turn it into a note.

When viewing a note, you’ll see a little tab at the bottom of the screen. Flip this open and you can see all the notes in your current search. Scroll back and forth through the thumbnails to quickly switch between the notes. Also, you can tap the note title to see more note details.

Work in progress
There’s a few things we haven’t finished yet or aren’t working perfectly.

We’re still working out the kinks with sync, it’s a little early to rely on it offline for critical information. The initial sync takes a while.
Highlighting search results isn’t fully implemented
Editing notes is still in the early stage of implementation
Play back and recording of audio now requires a 3rd party application
Note tag dialog does not yet auto-complete tag names
Upgrading from 1.5 to 2.0 Beta a little rough so you may need to uninstall Evernote 1.5 before installing 2.0 Beta
We still have some polish to add to the UI

Remember @Androidevicespy? It was the same Twitter account that tipped us off to Verizon’s collection of Motorola phones long before Verizon was willing to come clean (and before any of their leaksters were willing to spill the beans beforehand.) It seems the same Twitter account has picked up on the Motorola Olympus MB860 that just passed WiFi certification a couple of weeks ago. We know the phone is out there by now, but the device tracker suggests this phone has already been in testing for AT&T.

We suspect the Olympus MB860 could be the super-duper-phone that Motorola Mobility’s CEO Sanjay Jha isn’t trying to unwrap for the time being, but we have no hard evidence to back that up just yet (just the trusty word of industry colleagues.) It was once believed that this device would be headed for Verizon and Verizon only, but later reports suggested Verizon wouldn’t be the only carrier to enjoy Motorola’s high-end goods as they’ve been keen on doing.

[via Droid-Life]

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