As we've known for a while, the next big update will be called Donut. This will be followed by Eclair, then finally, Flan.

Not that this nonsensical naming convention has any bearing on the substance of the updates, but I can foresee having a tough time getting too hyped up about Flandroid, much less whatever weird confection comes next. Android 2.5 Brûlée? 3.0 Treacle Tart? 3.5 Amaretto Sorbet? Ugh, I'm hungry. Note: the names appear to be alphabetical, which will ensure awkwardness for many software generations to come.

[InformationWeek]

MakerBot founder Bre Pettis compared the CupCake to the mythical Altair 8800—but you know, for 3D printing. Next on their list is a 3D scanner that'll copy the design of objects so you can skip creating the 3D schematic yourself—turning CupCake into a replicator. We talked a bit about the possibilities of DIY object replication—Cory Doctorow's Printcrime story came up, but for now you're limited to 3D printing objects the size of cupcakes, hence the name.

You can buy CupCake fully assembled for $2500, but that takes part of the fun out of it—putting the $750 kit together makes for a weekend of awesome. Besides that very nice Empire State Building model—the tip of which was destroyed partly at my behest to show how sturdy the Lego-grade plastic is—the coolest item they'd produced was a custom lens hood for a camera. Why buy spare parts when you can just make them?

Here it is in action, generating a MakerBot coin:
[MakerBot]

Curiously, the paper refers to the two phones as one device, in two versions differentiated only by a keyboard.

The HTC Hero will be available in two versions, with and without a QWERTY keyboard. The model with a keyboard will be named HTC Memphis, or HTC Lancaster for sale by AT&T exclusively in the US for six months starting the third quarter, the paper indicated.

It certainly looks like there'll be a bit more than that to set the devices apart, and for the sake of variety, I hope there is. In any case, we'll be there. [Economic Daily News via Digitimes]

TuneWiki Introduces Social Blip Technology with New Android Cupcake Release

TuneWiki's Social Music Player App for Latest Google Phone Offers Worldwide Connectivity in Music and Lyrics through Facebook, Twitter and Email

(San Francisco, CA) May 20th, 2009-TuneWiki, the next generation social media music player, today announced its new app for Google's Android 1.5, Cupcake. This new version of the app features Blip technology for increased social connectivity, offering to post the user's current song on their Twitter or Facebook profile. The new social media capabilities come in addition to earlier TuneWiki versions, promoting a social network that allows users to add, edit and subtitle lyrics for audio and video files in all languages. This new version of TuneWiki is the most advanced and comprehensive social media music player compatible with Cupcake available today. Features found only in the Cupcake version include a home screen widget, allowing users to control TuneWiki without having to launch the full player, and the ability to organize and access different parts of their music collection directly from the home screen through live folders. TuneWiki for Cupcake is Bluetooth compatible and can be upgraded to an ad-free version for $4.99.

Features Include:
• Blip technology to update Facebook and Twitter with current playlist selection
• Android Home Screen widget
• Bluetooth wireless compatible
• Free Ad-Supported or Ad-free version available for $4.99
• Interactive Music Maps showing what other users are listening to around the globe
• Lyric subtitling for both audio and video, including the option to translate lyrics into 40+ languages

[TuneWiki]

We're finalizing the build this week to ensure optimal functionality and smooth delivery. Therefore, the rollout schedule has been reset by approximately a week, and we expect all G1 customers will have the update by early June.

So yes, if it starts rolling out next week, they will meet their "all G1 customers" by early June target.

T-Mobile USA is excited to offer its T-Mobile G1 customers new software updates, including Android 1.5. Starting at the end of next week, T-Mobile USA will begin rolling out Android 1.5 to T-Mobile G1 customers. The over-the-air update, which all G1 customers should receive by the end of May, will provide customers with many new feature enhancements and updates, such as:
· An on screen full QWERTY keyboard.
· Video record and playback capabilities.
· Easy uploading of photos to Picasa and videos to YouTube.

Additional details on Android 1.5 can be found at the T-Mobile G1 forum at http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/?category.id=Android or via the Android site:http://www.android.com/releases/.

As you can see, it's not final final yet, as the video recording is still a bit buggy, but overall the improvements look nice.

This is an official development build issued by HTC yesterday we're seeing. It's for dev phones only, technically, but if you have a rooted G1 you can install this just like any other "update.zip" recovery image. See our how-to guide as well as this XDA developers thread for more guidance on upgrading your G1 if you so dare. We're still looking at a non-specific May release date for the official OTA update.

• Additional on-screen keyboard - you decide how you enter your messages
• Video recording and playback
• Pictures and video include one-click Picasa and YouTube uploads
• Automatic adjustment of the touchscreen when the G1 is held horizontal or vertical
• Support for Bluetooth stereo headsets

Yummy. [T-Mobile Germany via Talk Android]

Despite the long list of new features in 1.5, the core of the OS is still more-or-less the same. Accordingly, most Android Market content is completely compatible, and those in the first wave to try the G1 builds were able to log in and download to their hearts' content. At some point in the last few days, though, it seems that Google has started cracking downGoogle-sourced builds can no longer access the store, though HTC-sourced builds still seem to work fine.

The trick is to nab one of the "H"-suffixed versions, which'll give you all the perks without any of the sacrifice. Note: Unlike previous "Cupcake" builds, this one includes Google Apps, the Android Market and the full battery of standard features that you can expect to see on a production HTC Sapphire, for example. It's not just the stripped-down OS. [haykuro via BGR]

Our money is on the successor to the T-Mobile G1 (also announced in NYC at a T-Mo event), which will almost certainly be the HTC Magic we've seen announced in Europe.

We can also expect that a major Android update will come along with it, since the only place we've seen a soft keyboard, which is necessary for the touchscreen-only Magic, is in the Cupcake development distribution. We'll keep you posted as we know more.

Most smartphone platforms support touchscreens and/or keyboards, and let you browse the internet, run apps, view photos and play games/music/movies. And while they may act the same on a fundamental level, not all smartphones are created equal. Here's where they match up, and where they don't:

Note: We have updated certain notes in the chart to reflect the lively discussion going on in comments, and we want that to continue. That said, we plan to leave Symbian both out of this discussion and any future discussions of the hottest smartphones of the day because it has little or no presence in the US, where we are based, despite its popularity in other countries. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.

iPhone
Apple is so fixated on maintaining a high level of user satisfaction and reduced frustration on the iPhone, they will bluntly admit to leaving out key smartphone featuresparticularly features that are either hard to implement in the UI, or require too much battery juice. The result is a pretty slick interface (with occasional glitches, yes, but fewer than others) that nevertheless leaves you wanting more. iPhone OS 3.0 (covered in full detail here) addressed most of the user gripessuch as lack of push notifications, copy and paste and search, but we're still left without video recording, Flash browser support and true background-app multitasking.

Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is brilliant for the business crowd because of its ability to support secure emails, work with corporate computer infrastructures and run proprietary business apps created entirely within Microsoft's device ecosystem. You can pretty much run and do anything you want on a Windows Mobile phone, which is great. But because the phones are made by many different competing companieswith no consistent quality assuranceUI and user experience don't compare to the other platforms, so the OS is not as good for people who want a fun smartphone for their own personal use.

One major gripe especially revolves around the screen and its systemic lack of both finger-friendly capacitive-touchscreen support and multitouch interaction. WinMo feels really clunky when you use a finger, and you otherwise have to use an annoying (and easily lost) stylus.

The official reasoning for no capacitive touchscreen support is puzzling. Here's what Prithvi Raj, Windows Mobile product manager of consumer experiences told us:

At this time, we are focusing on resistive touch because we wanted to ensure the highest quality across the entire experience on the phone, including in different applications such as Excel or Word. However, we have enhanced our software to help resistive screens act like capacitive in certain areas like the "gesture support" and "physics engine" that you see across the new UI of Windows Mobile 6.5 powered Windows phones.

Hrm. Well at least they're acknowledging the need for better gesture support, and the need to mimic the capability of capacitive touch. We'd rather they just skipped all that work and upgraded, though.

Android
Android is the code monkey's dream. Because the OS is fully open source, you can do anything you'd like to the phone. This means pretty much any feature you'd like on a cellphone is possible on Androideven the officially unsupported multitouch interactionprovided someone can write an app or extension for it. The downside? Even the official Google/HTC/T-Mobile release of the G1 had a UI design that felt incoherent, like you're using four different OSes instead of one. Also, despite all this free love, there's only one currently available phone, and it's ugly as all sin. Note: For more information, you should read this detailed Android vs. iPhone piece by Gina at Lifehacker.

BlackBerry
Like Windows Mobile, RIM's BlackBerry is also a business-oriented phone, but with a much more coherent consumer initiative under way. Relatively intuitive and well-structured to use, it feeds off of an email server that is second to none in getting messages to you as they're sent. And since the phone only runs on BlackBerry hardware, you can mostly be assured the OS will run smoothly (mostly). But despite their best efforts to liven things up with the admirable 4.6 OS and the not-so-admirable BlackBerry Storm touchscreen edition, this remains a fairly utilitarian phone that serves one main purpose: superior messaging. Note: Blackberry was deemed to not have Universal Search because it doesn't search files or Applications.

WebOS and the Palm Pre
Palm's Pre with its all-new WebOS has the potential to be the closest competitor to the iPhone, merging the zen simplicity and beauty of the iPhone OS with some of the background processing power of an Android or WinMo phone. You can run as many apps as you like concurrently, and manage them using a system that lets you quickly flick through apps like it was a photo system, great for staying on top of many things at once. But it also integrates the internet into so many facets of its UI (search, contacts, UI, etc.), that you might not even realize you're using the internet sometimes. If the iPhone is for the common man, WinMo for the executive, Android for the programmer and BlackBerry for the information junkie, WebOS could very much be for the savvy kids trying to stay on top of social media and Web 2.0. Let's see what happens when the thing actually ships.

Anything you'd like to add about the differences between the smartphone OSes? This is obviously an overview meant to highlight the most crucial differentiators, but if you've got something you want to share that's a little more nitty gritty, please pop it into comments pronto.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about smartphones, dumbphones or megaphones to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

The home screen folders are kind of cool, although at this early stage all they offer is a folder view of your contacts (all or starred). On display is also, of course, the soft keyboard, as well as a few UI brushups. A few other features touted as new here aren't actually new to Cupcake, and on the whole, not a lot has changed since we took the Cupcake dev branch for a spin via the Android SDK emulator a few months ago. [Phandroid]

Beyond that, details are thin. BG is claiming a flashless 3.2 megapixel camera (same as the G1), and all the expected connectivity (3G, wi-fi). They're also claiming it will be loaded with Cupcake, the supposed next version of the Android OS, even though confusion abounds over exactly what Cupcake itself is-a development tool, or an eventual update? The NYT has it on record that Cupcake is simply a dev release, but we have seen features in said release that aren't in the G1's recent 1.1 update, like the soft keyboard. And there's still no beauty shot of the G2/Magic in pop-out QWERTY mode, we might add...

So, haze is still strong here, and HTC did not unveil anything like this at their MWC press conference, but hopefully this Euro-only teasing is just the prelude to a wider release, because the hardware is certainly sexy. Hit up Boy Genius for more shots: [BG]