Apple Said to Be Bullying, Giving Wedgies to Flash Memory Makers

Anyone surprised that Apple's been accused of practicing some, shall we say, Machiavellian business tactics? The Korea Times published a story in which anonymous representatives of Apple's major flash memory partners, Hynix and Samsung, accuse Apple of ordering more memory than needed, then buying the necessary (smaller) amount once the price drops due to that whole supply/demand see-saw. It winds up in Remainders because it's awfully insidery, and honestly we're pretty glad flash prices are so cheap (a 64GB iPod Touch would've been unthinkable three years ago). Sorry, Samsung/Hynix! If you just sock Apple one time right in the face, maybe they'll leave you alone. [Electronista]

Legendary German Camera-Maker Launches Really Boring Digital Cameras

Praktica, a camera-maker out of Dresden, Germany (hence the Vonnegut, ha ha aren't we so literary), has the stature of Zeiss and Leica in the film world. Yet the company's new point-and-shoot digital cameras are the more boring, style-less pieces of plastic I've seen in a long time. The 10- and 12-megapixel cameras feature the normal scene modes, SD/HC storage, video recording and either a 2.7- or 3.0-inch screen. They're a snore and a half and it looks like they may be Germany-only, to boot. [Engadget]

ClearPlay's Upscaling 1080p DVD Player Allows High-Definition Censorship

ClearPlay, a company known for implementing "content control" in their DVD players (basically allowing parents to turn off objectionable content), just moved into the future, sort of! It's not a Blu-ray player or a media streamer, that'd be actually timely, but it is an upconverting, 1080p DVD player—the first of its kind to feature content control. It's available now for $100. [Engadget]

Survey of Android App Developers Reveals Unhappiness With Sales

Okay so go find a heaping spoonful of rock salt that you can chew slowly as you read this story, because there are serious issues with it, but: A recent survey of Android app developers showed that the majority are not satisfied with app sales performance in the Marketplace. Most apps (over 90%) are downloaded less than 10,000 times, which is pretty minimal compared to the sales of apps in Apple App Store for Apps (apps).

Now, the rock salt. For a survey like this, you need a wide variety of developers, doing all different kinds of apps (entertainment, utility, whatever), and the survey assuredly doesn't have that—only thirty developers were polled, a low enough number that frankly I don't trust any conclusions gleaned. Besides, of course Android app sales are lower; Android hardware sales are lower, too, and the Marketplace is a lot younger and less-established than the App Store. Basically, I'm not saying it's wrong, but we really can't trust this survey. [GigaOm]

Creative and ZiiLabs are showing off a pile of Zii reference hardware to potential hardware licensors in China today, in hopes that someone will manufacture it. The Zii phone reference design, pictured for the first time above, is the only one we can see right now, and promises full 1080p video playback over HDMI, OpenGL 2.0 accelerated gaming, and support for both Android OS and ZiiLabs' Plaszma software. And that's just the phone—ZiiLabs also has a 360º full HD webcam, a PCI-E video coprocessor, a pocket synthesizer and, well, lots.

But before we get to the rest of the new stuff, a little timeline for you. Back in January, Creative announced, with of an offshoot company called ZiiLabs, "Zii StemCell Computing." There were not adjectives strong enough, no superlatives super enough, no words wordy enough to describe the wonders of this StemCell computing. Unlimited Flexibility! Incredible Scalability! High Energy Efficiency! ET! CET! ER! A!

But wait, what is this thing? The Zii StemCell processor is basically an extremely flexible system-on-a-chip, which is to say a multi-talented slab of hardware with an ARM Cortex chip at its core, intended to power all manner of multimedia devices, from PMPs to phones to settop boxes to, well, whatever. Creative promised low power consumption, high processing power, and plenty of uses. The platform would be licensed to hardware manufacturers, and eventually, we'd find these Zii-powered gadgets in our possession, under familiar brands. (But not necessarily Creative itself.)

Then we were shown the Zii Egg—pictured above—which is an Android-powered PMP with an alternate OS called Plaszma. This was actual hardware—that's more like it—and it looked compelling: media playback was strong, and the device itself was hot, and most importantly for Creative, new. But this, like anything else out of ZiiLabs, was reference hardware—unless someone picked it up for manufacture, it was strictly for developers.

Fast-forward to this month, and the project is finally springing some leaks. A smartbook shows up out of nowhere. Rumors about netbooks, which could leverage the Zii chip's power for 1080p video playback, real-time encoding, HD video conferencing, Flash acceleration and more, emerge. And finally, today, an announcement. ZiiLabs is pitching more reference designs, like the Zii Egg, to manufacturers:

The line-up of Zii Powered devices on display include a dual OS concept mobile phone which supports the Plaszma OS and Android OS, a desktop touch screen video conferencing device, a web-box, a 360° multi-view camera system, a PCI Express add-on card that instantly empowers notebooks with HD video encoding for high quality video conferencing, a pocket-sized synthesizer that can emulate the sound of some of the world's best pianos, as well as the world's smallest credit card-sized Blu-ray quality media player – based on the ZMS-08 chip.

The headliner here is obviously the Trinity phone, which can count itself among the first wave of 1GHz Android phones, and promises serious media and 3D support. The reference hardware, as you can see, is conservatively designed, though undeniably nice—and apparently iPhone skinny.

But the other Zii Wares are compelling in their own ways. The videoconferencing system can apparently process a distortion-free 360° view in full HD. The PCI Express add-on card will do video offload duties, a la Nvidia's GPGPU systems. And that little "Blu-ray quality" media player, well, I really don't know. All of the Zii hardware is propped up by the Plaszma-centric ZiiLife suite, which includes videoconferencing software with media sharing, educational software, and an app store.

As they are now, these gadgets will probably never see the light of day—it'll be up to hardware manufacturers to pick up the reference designs, after which they'll undoubtedly put their own spin on each concept. And as far as the associated software goes, it'll most likely remain under wraps until there are actual products to use it with. At any rate, over the next few months we can probably expect to see some of these Zii-powered gadgets show up as actual, buyable products, whatever forms they may take. And honestly, I'm eager to see them. [ZiiLabs]

The overall winners: SweetDreams, which allows you to set specific nighttime settings (deflect incoming calls, disable Wi-Fi and GPS to save battery) automatically; What the Doodle?!, which is an online multiplayer game sort of like Pictionary; and WaveSecure, which lets you track your phone's location, backup data, remotely lock the device, remote wipe, and restore data. Those guys aren't super exciting to me, but the competition also resulted in some really cool ones.

Plink Art identifies artwork after you've taken a photo of it, so you can pretend you knew the difference between Monet and Manet the entire time; Celeste gives you an augmented reality view of the solar system; Car Locator remembers where you parked your car; and Andrometer measures the approximate distance from yourself to any object you can see. Check out the full list here. [Google Code]

Birdfeed 1.2
The biggest change in Birdfeed 1.2 is geolocation using the official Twitter API, which embeds the location of a tweet as metadata, unlike previous Twitter app geolocation powers, which were workarounds. It's probably my favorite implementation since it's the dead simplest, with a tap adding location to any tweet. Also new and excellent is support for Flickr, designed in a fairly elegant way. Of course, there's a bunch of smaller tweaks too, and now it's only $3, down from $5. It's still my favorite looking/feeling Twitter app.

Tweetie 2.1
Tweetie 2.1 has a bunch of gut changes that add up to a better experience. The big things are that there's now native support for Twitter's new official retweets (love 'em or hate 'em) and Twitter lists. Also, in-app spam reporting (yay) and better geolocation using Twitter's official API. Free update, of course.

Twidroid 3.0
Android's most powerful Twitter app is a lot more usable now. The main thing for me is that it finally supports threaded conversations, so you can see what the hell people were replying to. In-app link and photo previews, new keyboard shortcuts, and lots of other smaller UI tweaks. For the future, plug-ins could be huge. The first one is Google Maps, which is nice to have. Oh, and it doesn't look like ass on the Droid anymore.

[Twidroid, Tweetie, Birdfeed]

At first glance the browser is a bit of a mess: its Android Market listing is subliterate, and its interface—the tabs, specifically—look kind of assy on the Droid's higher-resolution screen. Beyond the glitches, though, it's a capable browser, with gesture support, RSS integration and yes, multitouch.

Dolphin's multitouch implementation works on a number of handsets aside from the Droid, from the Hero, which supports multitouch out of the box, to Cyanogen-modded G1s and MyTouch 3Gs, which don't. It works much better on faster hardware though: where it's a bit laggy on a stock Hero, it's surprisingly smooth on Motorola's speedier terminator phone. At any rate, it's free, and available now in the Market, so, go. [Dolphin via Engadget Mobile]

And by "Google Phone" we don't simply mean another Android handset. We're talking about Google-branded hardware running a version of Android we haven't yet seen.

Over the next few weeks, Google Phones (most probably in early, prototype form) will flood the Mountain View campus. They'll don large LCDs while running a new version of Android—either Flan or the version of Android beyond it—which our source spotted running on Google's handset as well as a laptop. (Whatever the software was, it most certainly wasn't Chrome OS, we were assured.)

But maybe the most intriguing bit is what someone said to our source offhandedly, that the current Android, the we all know and love, is not the "real" Android. So what makes for a "real" version of Android?

Our best guess is an Android OS with Google Voice at its heart.

You'll notice that one of the shots is in landscape mode. Be Geek, who scored the images, suggests that Sense with Android 2.1 will either support accelerometer-controlled landscape rotation, or HTC might have another landscape-slider planned. Time will tell. [Be Geek via SlashGear]

To see the gallery on a single page, click here.

Other Android App News

•Android 2.0 Full Review
• Google Maps Navigation
• Mikandi: The World's First Porn App Store for Android
• Higher Res Qik Video Streaming With Droid
• Gameloft Scales Back on Android Development (Then It Doesn't)
• How to Make That iPhone-to-Android Switch
• A New Layer That'll Make You Sick (By Tracking Government Bailout Dollars)
• Android's Conquering the Mobile Internets (With iPhone)
• Google Navigation for 1.6 Devices
• Chrome OS and Android Are Coming Together, One Day
• Sergey Carries a Droid, Wears Footies
• Sony Ericsson's Custom Nexus Interface Hands On
• Vimeo Works Better on Android Now

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this month, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here. See ya next month.

MiKandi is a white label app store for free and paid-for apps, allowing developers to upload more content around their filthy apps—including YouTube tutorials if you're so inclined. Asking developers "Maybe you're feeling like your innovative juices are being squeezed by not having the screenshots or video you need to properly showcase and sell your product?" they promise not to restrict any app unless it's illegal, further widening the cavity between Apple and Android. [MiKandi via PocketGamer]

Yes, the first thing you may notice is that Swype technically uses a QWERTY layout. But instead of pushing each key individually, you drag your finger from letter to letter.

It's tough to tell if the speed gains are legitimate, given this video has been created by the Swype camp. I will say, however, given that this demo is one hand vs. two, the technology certainly holds its own. What do you think? Would you be willing to part with traditional QWERTY to spell words through nonsensical doodles?

Swype will debut in Verizon's Samsung Omnia II arriving early next month before making its way to an unnamed Android phone next year. [Swype via TechCrunch via OhGizmo!]

That the iPhone is a massive source of online traffic isn't a surprise—that's been apparent since the week it launched. What's interesting here is Android's rise, which is dramatically quickening, already accounting for a fifth of mobile traffic in the US, when the real marketing push for the OS, starting with the MyTouch ads and the massive Droid launch, is only recently starting in earnest. What is a surprise, or at the very least a Sad Thing, is how poorly Palm is faring. Their tiny sliver of market share might seem understandable since they really only had one new phone for the duration of the survey, but this phone was supposed to be their savior; in the year since it was introduced, their mobile traffic actually fell.
Google and Apple's stark gain in the stats, collected by mobile advertising firm AdMob, is a little less spectacular worldwide, mainly because Symbian's established, but waning, 40% smartphone market share helps it snatch about 25% of mobile web traffic. Still though, two things are clear: Android and the iPhone are who mobile web developers are going to have to cater to, and WebKit, which Symbian uses in its browser too, is basically it.

Anyway, how about a bonus chart! Ever wondered how common the different Android handsets are, which is most popular, and which don't register? Well hello, extra pie:

The G1 is the predictable star here, but the Droid is exploding. [AdMob via Techcrunch]

The download is live in the App Market—just grab the newest version of Maps, and Nav is included—and Google's free turn-by-turn navigation software is mostly identical to the version found on the Droid. Mostly:

Some features of Android 2.0 are not available on Android 1.6, for example, the ability to use the "navigate to" voice command as shown in our demo video. However, you can still create a shortcut that will allow you to launch Navigation and start getting directions to a specific place from your current location with just a single touch from your home screen. For example, you can create a "Home" shortcut to quickly navigate home, no matter where you are. Just use the "Add" menu item from the home screen, then choose "Shortcuts", then "Directions." Please visit our forum to give us feedback, or our Help Center to get help using Google Maps Navigation.

Still though, free turn-by-turn for all, unless you have a Hero or one of Samsung's ditties, for which you are permitted to make one (1) extremely sad face. Let us know how it works in the comments. [Google]

Google, asked how on earth this slow-motion, oddly-planned scenario would play out, gives mixed responses. The official PR line, when asked about the merger:

[W]e're reaching a perfect storm of converging trends where computers are behaving more like mobile devices, and phones are behaving more like small computers. Having two open source operating systems from Google provides both users and device manufacturers with more choice and helps contribute a wealth of new code to the open source community.

There, perfect: acknowledge that your boss's sentiment is true, but deny any specific plans. But what about when CNET asks Schmidt directly? Observe:

The future will unfold as it does.

There it is! When these guys are talking about Chrome and Android merging, they're not talking about any kind of roadmap, they're just speaking in obvious, unusually long-term truisms, like they've been doing an awful lot lately: Two Linux-based operating systems from one company are bound to develop similarities; eventually, our computing usage will be totally centered around the web; in a decade, our notebooks and cellphones will probably be one device; the future is awesome; etcetera.

This Zen futurism is charming and all, but Chrome OS and Android aren't uncontrollable entities—they don't need to be crudely estimated, or attributed some kind of autonomy, especially by the people that make them. Specifically, they need to be planned. [CNET via Download Squad via Engadget]

Yup, even though the specs page lists support for UMTS/HSPA 800/850/900/1700/1900/2100, Sony Ericsson is going to be localizing the radios. From the source:

UMTS HSPA 800/850/1900 only available for phones sold in Americas (except Brazil) and Australia. UMTS HSPA 900/1700 not available for phones sold in Americas. UMTS HSPA 1900/2100 available worldwide.

So that means you'll still be able to find an X10 that works on T-Mobile, just not in this country. You'll still be able to import if you want to use your expensive handset with T-Mo's cheap Even More Plus plans.

This also doesn't mean that the X10 is definitely coming to AT&T. Sony Ericsson wants to have a carrier relationship, but it depends on if one works out. As it stands, if anyone will be subsidizing that huge $880 cost, it'll be AT&T. [Phandroid via Engadget]

Finance director for the company, Alexandre de Rochefort, says that even a company that's done extremely well on the iPhone can have trouble breaking even on Google phones:

We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others ... [The Android Market] is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.

That's the essence of the App Effect: High volume, customer pressure and nudging from Apple drive iPhone app prices down break-even levels, which gives app developers two options. They can either charge higher prices for equivalent apps on Android, for which they will be crucified by customers, or they can match their prices, and hope that enough of Android's comparatively small, fragmented user base just happens to stumble across said app in the barely navigable App Market. An attractive business proposition, I say!

So what needs to happen? Either Android adoption grows (which it's doing), the App Market gets much easier to navigate (a desktop app, maybe?), or you know, both. Reuters]

The system runs Android 1.5 through its 7-Inch (800×480) glass touchscreen display, plus you get Wi-Fi (b/g), GPS , microSD reader, 2MP camera, .3MP webcam and a USB port that can always add 3G (though, the whole idea becomes sort of silly at that point).

Plus, a built-in stand on the back means it can double as a picture frame. Yes!!
My only concern is the bit of lag you notice in this video. If the final production models have that issue ironed out, this could be an attractive little tablet. [Camangi WebStation via Gearlog]

He's a classy one, Mr. Brin. Like our own Brian Lam.

(Note: I actually do find Sergey's choice of phone and footies to be slightly more interesting than anything else Google announced today.) [CrunchGear, Ryan Block]

No wonder they "desire to have a carrier relationship" to subsidize the price. Sony's long had a tough time cracking the U.S market on its own, and the X10 deserves better.

Bonus news: Remember how Sony Ericsson's page said it would arrive this February? Well, it's now gone back to "to be announced". Don't be too concerned if you've got your eye on one...it's still slated to arrive by mid-next year. [Wall Street Journal]