Penny Mobiles – Mobile phone news, reviews & information

If you already own an Android smart phone, then you would have realized by now that the device is designed to be fast, easy to use and most importantly, easy to customize. Of course, you can only do so much with the phone’s available settings options, and this is why some developers have created app tools that will help you out.

The first tool we recommend is the Startup Auditor. It is basically a checklist of all the little programs that opens up whenever you turn on your Android smart phone. Of course, new users might not know what to enable and disable, fortunately, the app comes with pre-recommended settings depending on the version of the Android OS that is running.

This next one is made to appeal to those who spend plenty of hours away from home and office, the Power Manager allows users to fully understand which components and activities consume battery power the most. This will allow users to determine what they can do when the battery hits certain stages of depletion and there are no immediate charging opportunities in sight.

If the virtual keyboard is getting a little annoying to use, there’s a modified app version which allows users to type using both tapping and sliding motions (it is far easier to slide a finger across than to lift it up. There is a built in dictionary on the keyboard which allows it to predict words that are being typed.

Our last recommended tool focuses more on customizing phone use than the Android itself, the Android Firewall is made to help user decide which calls should be allowed and what should never push through. It works great for both incoming and outgoing calls –which is an excellent way of dealing with people who keep calling without permission, stalkers and phone marketing agents.

Looks like Apple is turning to the bigwigs in the film industry to make the next iPhone commercial. The Cupertino-based company has apparently enlisted the help of Oscar winning director Sam Mendes (the guy responsible for American Beauty) to make an iPhone HD commercial that will make the product sell like there is no tomorrow. The 44 year old Hollywood director was reportedly auditioning some actors for the commercial recently and the wannabe iPhone stars spilled the beans on Twitter.

The commercial is supposed to highlight the iPhone HD’s best feature which is video calling. The gist of the fourth gen iPhone will reportedly feature a mother and her daughter on video chat using the camera on the face of the iPhone HD. These do coincide with the various next gen iPhone covers and faceplates that are surfacing on the web recently.

The iPhone prototype that found its way to the hands of the press did have a front facing camera in addition to the conventional 5 megapixel snapper found at the back which is also capable of shooting HD (720p) videos.

Aside from that, it is almost guaranteed that Apple will also show various situations in which the iPhone HD’s other features are being highlighted. According to various sources, Apple has also struck a deal with pop icon Lady Gaga to be one of the mobile phone’s main faces. The public may see her in the commercial promoting media features of the device.

According to popular tech blog Engadget, the same source that has brought the commercial to their attention also gave the iPhone HD a nickname. The internal name by which the Apple guys are calling the iPhone HD is reportedly “N90” or simply as the Mammoth.

The mobile phone is due to be launched this June, with everyone’s favorite guy, Steve Jobs, leading the way in the developer conference in San Francisco.

Facebook has already announced that they will be offering new ways for people to edit the privacy settings. It is promising that the social networking site is starting to find solutions –if not a bit too slowly. For the most part, people simply need to wait it out for the next few weeks and try out the new features as they arrive. But for those who are truly concerned about privacy, here is a quick guide on how to change the settings.

First off, head over to your friends page; the first thing that users need to do is organize friend’s lists. Sorting out your friends from your family and from your officemates is a great way to avoid those embarrassing moments when you accidentally invite your folks to a drinking party. This will also be an important part of the next step.

Head over to ‘account’ and go to privacy settings. This is basically where you get to access every aspect of your account –there is no real sense going through every single item, but be sure to check every option starting from the top (which starts with “personal information and posts” all the way down to your “block list”).

The last part will be Facebook’s apps. To access the settings for these, go to ‘account’ and access the application settings. Now, here is the clincher, you should set aside plenty of time for this. An hour would be fine if you only have a handful of friends and several applications,  but if you have thousands of friends and hundreds of apps, you might want to set aside a whole afternoon –especially for changing the app settings.

And if you are not too sure, you can simply delete any app that you have no intention to keep, always remember that many of these apps are authorized to access user account details.

It seems that Apple made a really bad move by isolating and alienating their developers. Worst of all, they have pushed away what is potentially one of the best software engineers from creating software and development tools for Apple devices.

At the recent Google I/O conference, a new extension for Adobe Dreamweaver has been demonstrated and as clearly seen, having HTML5 content pages is now as easy as pie. Of course, the new HTML5 format has long way to go before it becomes a standard, for now, developers are still experimenting.

While end users may not care so much, this is a big issue for app developers. Adobe’s software is always well suited for artists and developers. The Flash Professional CS5 would have been the ultimate tool for making Flash based apps for iPhone products. But since Apple has rejected Adobe outright, the company will now bring both Flash and HTML5 to Android users.

Speaking of developers, the new Dreamweaver update is as easy to use as the rest of the software. Many front and back end developers already make use of Dreamweaver’s WYSIWYG preview and code view modes –the same applies for the additional HTML5 features. Included in the patch is lingo help and of course, some presets that can be set easily from drop down menus that show off the different features.

Of course, HTML5 is not the only thing on Adobe’s development plans. They still have their AIR and of course, Flash formats. Flash Professional CS5 has provisions for both. And since Google has no restrictions on what development tools are being used, developers are free to choose which program is needed for their apps and software. Speaking of AIR and Flash; the two new formats will also be used in the upcoming Google TV Software.

This week has been a major assortment of things to look forward to and signs of new technology to come.

First off, HTC has announced the very first smart phone that will be using a processor that goes beyond the usual 1GHz of the original Qualcomm Snapdragon. A new WSD chip has been announced and it has been reported to be clocked at the speed of 1.3GHz. While significantly faster, there have yet to be any apps or games to be released that will require such a high speed processor. But since this device is the Mondrian – a Windows Phone 7 handset, it is probable that many of the full 3D XNA titles would be able to make full use of the hardware.

Apple has also been busy this week. According to reports, the company is still struggling to keep up with the demands for the Apple iPad. Following problems in one of their manufacturers in Asia (apparently, some workers went on strike due to poisonous chemicals being used in the production process), the official website has changed the tentative date of launch from May 28 to June 7 –coinciding with the rumored date of the iPhone announcement. Speaking of the new Apple smart phone, it has been reported that they have had over 4 million units manufactured for June alone.

Last on the list is Google –the creators of the Android mobile platform are all too happy to show off the new 2.2 Froyo at the Google I/O and they have also announced that the 3.0 Gingerbread is on the way. The company has stated that they are now focusing on the development of HTML5 as a new web format. Google will also launch VP8, a new video codec that Adobe will be supporting with a new Flash player. The event also gave Google the chance to show off the new Google App Engine for business.

Google has already announced that their first self branded smart phone, the Nexus One will be the first Android handset to support the new Flash 10.1 format. Of course, Adobe AIR will also be supported making the Nexus One the phone with highest web standards compatibility.

Cupertino based Apple has already drawn in their lot in the tech industry after they released the details of the now controversial iPhone 4.0 SDK developer’s agreement. In said agreement, a clause fully detailed that developer can no longer use third party software –a direct slap in the face of Adobe that was just about to release Flash Professional CS5 which came with a major Flash to iPhone compiler. This started what would be the great Apple and Adobe “over the web with letters” debate –which begun with a lengthy letter from Steve Jobs himself.

Anyway, it appears that despite the initial loss of having Apple’s outright rejection (and the fact that Adobe stock value fell a bit when the agreement was made public), the Flash developer is once again back on its’ feet and this time, it is heavily backed by Google, developers of the Android operating system and of course, Apple’s largest rival in the mobile phone industry.

Showcasing Flash on the Nexus One is a great start for the new partnership. The high end Android phone is fully equipped to show the world that it can handle the resource heavy Flash content and that the web format actually works great on touch user interfaces. The Google show does not end there however. At the recently held Web 2.0 Expo, Google showed off their Android tablet device which became a major highlight as it was the first tablets to support Flash content.

Flash 10.1 support for the Android will be available when version 2.2 Froyo comes out.

There is plenty of focus on the availability of eBooks on digital devices. Since the launch of the Apple iPad touch screen tablet, there has been a renewed media focus on digital literature. Google has not only launched Google Editions and a Kindle app has been released for the Android as well. Indeed, eBook reading is a smart phone feature that people actually want and manufacturers recognize that need.

Still, games developer PopCap has taken a small study of user preferences and from their findings, people would rather play games than read eBooks when they are on the road or travelling. While it might be said that people in general prefer to play games than read books, there is also the fact that this study is pretty isolated and that the sample was taken from a very niche crowd –gadget owners who are on the commute.

In general, people grow up knowing that games can be played everywhere. Book reading on the other hand, is practice that most people prefer to engage in when they are at the comfort of their homes (certainly, there are also individuals who are quite comfortable reading a book in public).

Another factor to consider is that book reading is an activity that requires more time than a quick round of a casual mobile phone game application. It makes more sense for a person to engage in a quick activity for the duration of a commute. Had the study taken in samples of people who are otherwise engaged in long trips then the number of people who read would also increase.

In any case, the study did prove something very valuable; it is that small, easy to play games are quite appealing to a lot of people. Many folks spend bits and parts of their days engaged in small moments of waiting and rest that they would want to fill in with something entertaining –like a good game to play.

There has been a big call for Google to boost its privacy practices. With Facebook’s standard on customer privacy being significantly lower than what people want, there is plenty of pressure for Google to provide that stability that people need.

The recent fuss in Germany about the collection of WiFi network data by the Google street car has forced Google’s hand in the matter. However, since the data in question is potentially sensitive, they have hired a third party in order to arbitrarily take care of the disposal of the information.

Google’s VP, Alan Eustace, writes the following in the recently updated Google Blog.

“In that blog post, and in a technical note sent to data protection authorities the same day, we said that while Google did collect publicly broadcast SSID information (the WiFi network name) and MAC addresses (the unique number given to a device like a WiFi router) using Street View cars, we did not collect payload data (information sent over the network). But it’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products.”

“So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.”

“As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible. We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and are currently reaching out to regulators in the relevant countries about how to quickly dispose of it.”

Google is taking translation seriously. As the largest search engine, Google is a major player in the web industry and often finds itself dealing with people all over the world. This is why their translation functions have been improving heavily in the past few months. Just a week ago, Google announced that its Goggle augmented reality application will be receiving a scan and translate function for a limited number of languages. Added to the many voice translation services available, these will turn any Android smart phone into an invaluable travel tool.

Now, it has been announced that Google’s core translation service, Google Translate will be getting new alpha languages. While it will certainly take a while for these new additions to make it to the Goggles or voice app, it will at least be present in the web browser.

Ashish Venugopal, a research scientist at Google has made a post at the official Google blogs:

“At Google, we are always trying to make information more accessible, whether by adding auto-captioning on YouTube and virtual keyboards to search or by providing free translation of text, websites and documents with Google Translate. In 2009, we announced the addition of our first ‘alpha’ language, Persian, on Google Translate. Today, we are excited to add five more alpha languages: Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian — bringing the total number of languages on Google Translate to 57.”

“These languages are available while still in alpha status. You can expect translations to be less fluent than for our other languages, but they should still help you understand the multilingual web. We are working hard to ‘graduate’ these new language(s) out of alpha status, just as we did some time ago with Persian. You can help us improve translation quality as well. If you notice an incorrect translation, we invite you click ‘Contribute a better translation’. If you are a translator, then you can contribute translation memories with the Translator Toolkit. This helps us build better machine translation systems especially for languages that are not well represented on the web.”

“Collectively, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Georgian and Urdu have roughly 100 million speakers. We hope that these speakers can now more easily access the entire multilingual web in their own language.”

It seems that Apple is focusing all of its efforts on making their US clients happy as they have delegated a full two months simply to distribute the device in the United States. The iPad touch screen tablet has been out in the US since April 3 and has been unboxed, reviewed and even taken apart for the world to see.

Oddly enough, the “world” will have to wait until the end of May before the device is properly distributed to all other countries outside of the US.

It was ironic that it was Steve Jobs himself who stated that production of the iPad is ongoing and that they are able to keep up with the demands for the product. In the very same week that he said that, Apple announced that it would not be able to launch the iPad in the end of April, but it would be delayed until the end of May instead.

Simply put, Apple is screwing over the international market.

Even those who have decided to have the device shipped from the US are getting a bad deal. With the iTunes store for the iPad currently locked only to US based users, there is no way of downloading free content without coming up with a fake US address. Of course, purchasing apps in the store is completely impossible as it would require an American credit card as well.

The iPad touch screen tablet functions as a web browser, eBook reader, media player and even as an app running device. Its small size make ideal to have around and it is also lightweight allowing users to read it for long periods of time (or simply have it lying on their lap).