Cell Bytes

Verizon and Amazon today announce that Amazon’s Kindle app for Android will come preloaded on all of Verizon’s future Android handsets. I haven’t taken a good look at the application myself (I’m not a big fan of digital books.) but Amazon’s ridiculously extensive catalog of titles available should please the eBook fan who isn’t too big on Amazon’s actual Kindle eReader. If you aren’t a fan of this being on your device, you’ll probably have to deal with it as I couldn’t get it to uninstall on the Samsung Fascinate (unless you root your device and remove the .apk yourself, of course.) Press details sit below.

Verizon Wireless Brings Kindle Experience to Android Smartphones and Other Devices

Kindle for Android Comes Ready to Go on DROID™ 2 by Motorola, DROID X by Motorola and the Samsung Fascinate™

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and SEATTLE, Oct. 13 — Verizon Wireless and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) today announced that the Kindle reading experience is now easily found on many Android devices running on the nation’s most reliable wireless network and will be available on more devices in the future.
Kindle for Android lets customers discover and read more than 700,000 books in the Kindle Store and is easy to find on the application screen of the new Samsung Fascinate™ – which boasts a brilliant 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen display – as well as on DROID™ 2 by Motorola and DROID X by Motorola.
Kindle for Android allows customers to browse, download and start reading their favorite books directly from their Android phone. Features of the Kindle app include:
•Buy Once, Read Everywhere – Amazon’s Whispersync technology syncs your bookmark across devices, so you can pick up where you left off.
•With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books purchased from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online, where they can be re-downloaded at any time.
•The largest selection of books people want to read. The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 700,000 books, including New Releases and 107 of 111 New York Times Bestsellers. Over 575,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 80 New York Times Bestsellers.
“We’re very excited to bring Kindle for Android directly to Verizon Wireless customers,” said Jennifer Byrne, executive director, business development and partnerships for Verizon Wireless. “Our smartphones come with great screens that make buying and reading books simple and easy, and Amazon’s commitment to reading and offering a seamless customer experience is directly in line with what our customers want.”
“Customers are already telling us they love Kindle for Android, and we think they are going to be excited to get their Verizon Wireless phones and other devices preloaded with the Kindle app,” said Dave Limp, vice president, Kindle. “We are thrilled to be working with such an innovative company as Verizon Wireless and are excited to have Kindle for Android on these three phones and on other devices down the road.”
Customers can also find the app by searching for “Kindle” in Android Market™. For more information about the free Kindle app, go to www.amazon.com/kindleapps. For more information about Verizon Wireless, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.

A pretty worthwhile read has popped up over at PCMag in which Google big wig Andy Rubin sat down for a chat about all things Android. In the interview Rubin covers everything from the current state of the Android OS and its various iterations in terms of OEMs all the way to the newcomer Windows Phone 7 and how it will affect the smartphone space.

Rubin sees it as a disadvantage for new phones to see releases with old software in place, and looks at the progression of Android as having finally caught up with what is expected of a smartphone. From this point forward all released will be focused on innovation rather than basic features. Among those innovations expected for the next installment of Android are a bigger focus on gaming, the emergence of HTML5, and an improved browser and browsing experience (though Rubin is quick to point out that Android currently offers one of the best mobile browsing interfaces).

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the interview is Rubin’s take on Windows Phone 7. Bluntly, he sees it as superfluous. In his ideal world capitalistic competition would give way to a system that already works, saying, “the world doesn’t need another platform. Android is free and open; I think the only reason you create another platform is for political reasons.”

Read the whole interview at the source link below.

[via PCMag]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting, just as we all figured after a leaked distribution agreement, that Amazon is indeed launching their own Android app store, and it could be coming much sooner than expected. As soon as the end of the month, that is, according to sources talking to All Things Digital. Amazon is currently putting in the final work for the app store and drumming up developer support, even with a ruleset in place that requires certain exclusivity when releasing an app for the new marketplace.

Certain hurdles are in place that would prevent older apps from simply being ported over to the new market and sold. Apps couldn’t be sold at a lower price on other markets and wouldn’t qualify if they had been released for an extended period of time on another distribution platform. How this will work in light of the long-standing Apple App Store and Android Market is yet to be seen. Google is known to be making some major tweaks, if not a full overhaul, to the Android Market concurrent with the release of the next iteration of the OS, so time will tell how Amazon’s take fares.

[via All Things Digital]

It looks like Mr. Rogers doesn’t want Verizon to be the only kid in the neighborhood touting their LTE 4G progress today. In a press release, the Canadian carrier announced a comprehensive LTE trial alongside Ericsson in hopes of unlocking, “lightning-fast HD video streaming, gaming, communications, transactions and other connected experiences through mobile Internet.”

The testing will take place in Ottawa utilizing recently acquired AWS spectrum. Keep in mind this is LAB testing so there really isn’t any idea when Rogers customers will, or even if they will, enjoy 4G LTE. The company has been leading the way in terms of Canadian data network speeds, being first to light up HSPA+ in North America last year so lets hope their pioneering ways continue.

Feel free to check out the press release and the company blog post for more info.

It’s that time again: HTC’s ready to open their books and count their blessings. They’ve posted numbers for Q3 2010 – which ended 6 days ago, officially – and we’re not the least bit surprised at the results: their profits have almost doubled since this same quarter in 2009. As always, it’s no doubt thanks to Android as HTC has been quiet on the Windows Mobile front as of late (though we know that’s going to be changing once Windows Phone Series 7 makes its way to market.)

Specifically, they’ve posted profits of T$11.1 billion (that’s $360 million) for July-September. That’s around T$3 billion more than market expectations, and an increase from $T5.7 billion a year ago.

“Investors are comfortable with HTC’s status in the Android market,” said Steven Tseng, an analyst at RBS in Taipei. “HTC will keep a stable position, even if it is not a leader in the sector.”

Even if HTC has their eyes set on Windows Phone 7, we can’t imagine they’ll let their focus on Android slip going into this last quarter for 2010 and heading into 2011.

[via Reuters]

In mid August, Oracle sued Google over it’s Android operating system, claiming the world’s new mobile leader was violating 7 patents the company owned and acquired from Sun Microsystems. Not only is Google asking for the case to be dismissed, they’re openly calling Oracle out for their ideological contradiction.

As explained by the Wall Street Journal, Google is drawing negative attention to Oracle by claiming it is “attacking the open-source licensing policies it used to support.” Essentially they’re saying if you combine “the grass is always greener” with “practice what you preach”, “fair weather fan” and a few other cliches that you’ve got the recipe for this Oracle lawsuit.

Described a bit more eloquently by our own Quentny Kennemer:

The infringement pertains to code written in Java – the same Java owned and licensed by Oracle-acquired Sun Microsystems and the same Java that helps power Dalvik and Android as a whole.

This is pretty fundamental, base-level, yet hugely important stuff. I’m no Robert Shapiro, but I’d venture to guess that Google will come out of this whole thing unscathed. They might not get the summary dismissal they want, but I think worst case scenario this gets settled out of court as Oracle realizes they’re hurting themselves and they’re image while they make a hail mary pass while in goal line formation.

Google has already responded once before and even withdrawn from an event because Oracle was participating. Can’t we all just get along? When it comes to market share, profit, and ownership of the lucrative mobile market… it’s become all too obvious that “getting along” is a rarity, although we tend to do it better than most in the Android world.

EXTRA CREDIT: If you can tell why the included picture is relevant, and provide symbolic references to this story and the movie, you will earn the respect of the nostalgic childhood movie gods.

Samsung’s hit another Galaxy milestone that they’re rightfully proud of. Today, we learn that they’ve crossed the 5-million mark for the amount of Galaxy S phones sold in all regions. This includes the United States where over two million people have grabbed up arguably one of the fastest Android phones on the market thanks to the 1GHz Hummingbird processor it packs. Their next biggest market was their home turf – South Korea – where the Galaxy S and the Galaxy U (We don’t know how Samsung can tie this phone into these figures, but it’s their money.) sold a combined 1.2 million units.

Recently, we learned Samsung wasn’t going to stop with the Galaxy S just because it’s been launched on most major carriers in the regions that count. It’s said they’ll be bringing out more variations like the U to shake things up while still considering it a part of the Galaxy S family. (We heard they might do this with the Samsung Continuum, though nothing’s confirmed.)

Say what you want about the Galaxy S phones: they’re popular, fast, and successful. The fact that they run Android makes me optimistic for the future as more companies learn they can turn a sinking ship around by producing stellar products. (Just ask Motorola how they’re doing these days.)

Right now only Sprint boasts 4G speeds in America, but Verizon Wireless looks to kick off their own 4G LTE efforts with a bang, launching in 30 cities across the nation later in 2010. They’ll be able to reach up to 100 million people with their 4G range- nothing short of astounding.

But what devices will run on Verizon’s 4G network when it launches? That’s something we’re hoping to find out tomorrow, at CTIA Apps & Enterprise, when Verizon’s head honcho hosts a Press Conference on the future of Verizon’s 4G LTE Network.

It’s possible we don’t hear anything about specific devices, but we’ve got our fingers crossed. And either way, streaming the NFL Mobile App on Verizon just in time for the playoffs will be straight up sugar.

Quentyn and I are in San Francisco now to cover the event and Verizon is marked down as one of our top priorities so expect coverage tomorrow. It goes down at 2:30pm EDT and if you’re not at CTIA you can watch and listen in here.

Federico’s updated LauncherPro again, this time to add more popups as he promised when he first announced the new feature. Today adds bookmarks which – you guessed it – will cause a list of bookmarks to popup upon swiping up on the designated dock launcher (which we assume you’d make the browser.) Aside from that and a big fix, this is a quick incremental update. Grab 0.8.1.0 in the Android market or at Federico’s LauncherPro site now.

To say that OpenFeint and the launch of their social gaming network on Android has been successful is a bit of an understatement. The network that now claims 40 million users across the iPhone and Android platforms scored big with half of their first eight releases landing in the top 15 of the Android Market. Their two biggest titles were Fruit Ninja and MiniSquadron, both of which laid claim to two position on the Android paid games chart within their first 72 hours of release.

And because of the great success, why not treat us to a few more games? Well, OpenFeint was going to release them one way or another, but with a full head of steam we expect the same chart-topping success out of at least a few of the new titles announced. Twelve new games will be popping into the Android Market, including Super K.O. Boxing 2, Flick Kick Rugby, Kamikaze Race, Touch Racing Nitro, Penatly World Challenge 2010, Cestos 2: Party Time, SpeedX, Babo Crash Deluxe, Brain Twister Lite, Color Cocktail Lite, Dot Dot, and Skyforce.

All games will be featured in the Feint Game Spotlight app, which can also be found in the Android Market, and there are a lot of quality titles here. Check out Quentyn’s review of Cestos 2, if you haven’t already.