Cell Bytes

The T-Mobile myTouch (or myTouch HD if you prefer to call it that) was officially unveiled just last week — meaning most of its safely guarded secrets are now out in the open — but one more tidbit comes our way via a newly release fact sheet for the device. Among the well-known listings for HSPA+ support and rear and front-facing cameras we find that the phone will include T-Mobile TV, a service that offers live streaming and on-demand television and movies from various partners such as ABC, Fox Sports, PBS Kids, Disney, and more.

More and more companies are moving towards mobile TV as the next frontier as bandwidth increases and smartphones reach a greater adoption-rate. Plus the big old screens of newer handsets are perfect for watching such content on the go. For now, not a whole lot of info can be gathered about TMo’s service, but the reference of “always-free programming” in the fact sheet sounds promising for those who won’t want to pay an extra subscription fee.

[via TmoNews]

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]

No, your eyes are not deceiving you: that’s the screen of a Samsung Galaxy Tab, with a “Porn.” icon front and center.

Stop sniggering and take a closer look at the rest of the screen.  Whole lotta non-English text there, y’notice?

That’s because this particular Galaxy Tab’s from Romania, and “Porn.” is a contraction of “Pornire,” which is their word for “start.”  (The fact that many tech users START their online days with porn should not even factor into the equation…)

So until Larry Flynt starts selling a Hustler-branded smartphone interface, this may be the closest you’ll ever get to a genuine smutty production desktop.

[Via CrunchGear]

We just got back from demoing an onslaught of Android-based handsets from Motorola and there was one in particular I really wanted to get my hands on. The Motorola FlipOut might not be the most exciting device for people like you and myself who appreciate a good combination of braun and beauty, but Motorola’s not here to please just one crowd.

The FlipOut isn’t the performance beast you’d want to handle all of the heavy lifting of intense mobile computing, but the device also isn’t for the person that needs to do a lot of heavy lifting to begin with. And there are a lot of people that fit right into that category. For the sake of comparison, the Symbian operating system powers many low-powered, cost-efficient handsets around the world. Their platform isn’t number one because of how many smartphones Symbian is on, it’s because of how many feature phones it’s on. Most people who own a phone with Symbian aren’t even aware that it’s Symbian. This is the type of market penetration Motorola’s getting at with the FlipOut.

Affordability attracts a ludicrously large amount of people, and when Motorola shows those people what they can do with a phone that won’t break their bank, they’re hoping people are going to want to flock to that product. This is what the FlipOut is all about, and this is what Motorola’s overall strategy with Android is all about.

I digress, though, because these are supposed to be my impressions of the device. I sat down with the FlipOut for a decent amount of time today and while I wasn’t completely blown away, I was able to play out the age-old scenario of a teen or a light smartphone user who would pick this up to do their cliche bidding of texting, emailing, and web browsing.

The first thing I’m drawn to is the keyboard, of course. The phone flips out to reveal a full 5-row QWERTY keyboard for those who aren’t really keen on typing on a screen that small. (And the screen is small, indeed, clocking in at 2.8-inches with a QVGA resolution.) The keys had great track and feel, but were just a little too scrunched together for my taste (though this could be because I have hands the size of coconuts.) I had no problems with “clickability,” if you will, but it still wasn’t as fast as when I took it to the virtual keyboard (which I didn’t have many problems with considering how little room I had to work with.)

Backing Android 2.1 with MOTOBLUR (yes, Motorola’s still using MOTOBLUR despite their plans to eventually move away from it) is a very respectable TI OMAP processor (still not sure which one) clocked at 720 MHz and working in conjunction with a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU. This won’t “cut through the web like a circular saw through a banana,” but it’ll make for some pretty speedy activity when switching between apps, browsing the web, and typing to your heart’s content.

One thing I was pretty disappointed with was the phone’s camera. I didn’t expect it to keep up with the likes of the Motorola Droid 2 or the Droid Pro, but I didn’t think the muddy quality it eventually ended up producing would bother me as much as it did. (Mind you, it’s only a 3-megapixel sensor but I’ve gotten better quality out of other devices with similar specs.) I wish I could say for sure what the problem is, though, because I couldn’t tell whether or not this was because of the low-resolution screen or the quality of the camera’s sensor. The only way for me to be sure would’ve been to export the images and take a look on my computer, but I didn’t have much time to do that. Even with giving the FlipOut the benefit of the doubt in this area, I didn’t walk away too satisfied.

Other than that, though, everything was business as usual. When you take away Android, MOTOBLUR, and all of the features you expect to make up any minimal Android handset these days, the FlipOut is a unique and fun communication tool that’ll catch on by virtue of its form-factor and “flipout” mechanism alone. And if that means getting more Android devices into more hands, then I’m all for the large pool of different and unique devices we’ve been so fortunate to enjoy these days.