Dooba.net

This is a very interesting article: here

The bottom line is that the author things open source (or at least totally open app development) will overtake the iPhone in the end. Android is totally open source and there are little restrictions on the app store… and you can load apps without using the app store. The Pre has little restrictions on its app store as well. Nothing like what Apple does.

Plus, like I have said before, the fact that Android lets you do almost anything and access any part of the OS or hook any sort of even are huge. You want a new dialer app? Do it. Want to hook all your incoming SMS and do soemthing funky with them? Sure why not. The iPhone restricts all of this.

And of course multitasking is huge. And with better technology with batteries or display technology (shameless corporate plug: Qualcomm’s mirasol) there are so many possibilities for a true computing phone.

*** UPDATE ***

Hands on with this phone plus some great pictures here.

This thing looks great, and notice at the end of the article… flash player comes standard!

*** ***

HTC announced another Android handset today – the “Hero”

See specs here

A couple of big things jump out at me:

1) Flash support in the web browser
2) 5mp camera with auto focus and video capture
3) The “Hero” OS overlay from HTC.
4) Finally HTC puts in a headphone jack that doesn’t need a dongle

There are plenty of videos on youtube, etc, that show the Hero UI update for Android. This looks pretty slick, nice widgets like real time streaming stock quotes. Plus the look and feel are a bit more polished than the standard Android.

The other standard Android specs are here – Qualcomm 528Mhz proc, HSDPA, wifi, but then they also say “multitouch” screen. That is interesting. There is a custom Cupcake build out there that supposedly enables multitouch, but I haven’t tried it. That would be a nice addition.

I didn’t see price info and there is no official announcement from T-Mo, but the pics on engadget show “T-Mobile” on the screen, so I assume it will be coming. Good news for Android fans, more choices!

Get ready for insane power in your smart phone… coming soon from Qualcomm:

The future Qualcomm QSD8672 will be a dual-core Snapdragon that features two CPU computing cores and will include HSPA+, up to 28Mbps download speeds, 1080p high-definition video, Wi-Fi, mobile TV, and GPS. The graphics core is based on Advanced Micro Devices’ ATI unit’s technology.

Snapdragon cores currently run at 1Ghz with 1.3 planned and then eventually 1.5. Two of those plus at least one QDSP along with all the other features, in a single chip. Remember that Qualcomm bought the mobile graphics division of ATI, so the new gfx core will something like an entry level mobile computing chip. Someone needs to build a device with the form factor of the Toshiba G01 for a nice big screen and you would have a killer mobile device.

So it’s official, the HTC “Magic” is coming to T-Mobile. Pre sales start July 8th.

I’m pretty excited about this. Mostly because the phone looks SOO much better than the current G1. No info on pricing yet – hopefully the upgrade price isn’t ridiculous. But I’ll definitely be upgrading.

Specs look nice too, running a 7k series Qualcomm MSM with a 528MHz CPU + DSP, 3.2 inch screen, HSPA data, autofocus 3.2 MP camera with video.

Qualcomm moved into part of the spectrum vacated in the DTV transition. This paved the way for expanding their MediaFLO service (streaming TV on your phone or other devices).

Nice eWeek Article here.

More about MediaFLO here.

My company (Qualcomm) publishes a magazine called QMag (link to online edition, or you can subscribe for free).

There were a couple of interesting things in the latest edition.

One of our divisions works on a display technology call Mirasol. As we all know, battery life is one of the most important issues with mobile phones, and the display usually eats a lot of that. Just like on your laptop, if you dim you screen, your batt life goes up. In talking about display technology, there was this interesting bit of info:

** Not in original QMag article

Interesting that the HTC has the best resolution (by far) and also the best battery life.

And then there is a small blurb about some researchers at Washington University that came up with USB ultrasound probes that work with WinMo. So apparently in developing countries, doctors could use mobile phone technology to take an ultrasound. Pretty cool.

So we got a demo Toshiba G01 at work. Or should I say a friend did, they are looking at graphics drivers and such. The G01 is the first phone to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor. This is basically netbook level power (think Intel Atom) in your phone. Crazy.

The first thing you notice when picking up the phone is the unique size. Its very thin (thinner feeling than an iPhone), but the other 2 dimensions are bigger than any other phone I’ve seen. Its almost like someone took an iPhone and used a rolling pin on it. This might be a problem for people with smaller hands, and I’m not so sure its great for the pocket of your jeans. The other thing is the phone is very light. The body seems solid, and feels nice.

The huge standout here is the screen. Its big. 4.1 inches of goodness. And at 800×480, it looks great. The media player supports DivX and other popular formats, so you will put that screen to good use. Also, supposedly the browser will support Flash. But we’ve heard this before about phones, so that remains to be seen.

The demo unit had WinMo 6.1 along with Toshiba’s custom UI layer. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of WinMo, it just looks old compared to the competition. But no big deal. The thing I didn’t like at all was the Toshiba UI. It was just odd and not intuitive. Like most other smart phones, there are icons in a grid, but then there are 3 colored stripes in the background that divide the screen equally. Swiping left to right (or R to L) makes these three stripes spin, and you realize they are supposed to be three “3D” columns that rotate. Each time you swipe across you spin to a new side of the columns and see new icons. This is kind of weird.

I didn’t see much in the way of other widgets to UI improvements, so hopefully something is going to change before launch.

The real win with this phone is the insane processing power and good battery, but if the UI is lame its not going to matter all that much.