What You Need to Buy

There are plenty of smartphone accessories that are worth considering, and a few that you actually need. Proceed with caution, but don't be afraid to treat your new smartphone, and yourself, to a few goodies.

A Case: They look goofy, Jason hates them, and they screw with your device's carefully designed curves. But here's the thing: smartphones are fragile. They aren't like dumbphones, and a single fall—especially with devices with a glass screen—can poop all over your new smartphone party. Until you're trained, play it safe. Wrap your unit. Case brand isn't important, so just take your pick from your local Best Buy or wherever. Just make sure your device's corners are covered, because it's edge impacts that break the most glass. Just remember, you're stuck in a multi-thousand dollar contract with this device, which itself would costs hundreds of dollars to replace. It's actually kind of terrifying! Pretend it's a baby, if that helps.

Headphones: Your smartphone is now your primary media player, too, so you're going to need to ditch the headphones or headset it came with. Yes, they all suck; no, your phone's aren't the one exception. If you don't care about a microphone, treat yourself to a decent pair of in-ear headphones. If you do, get a midrange wired headset.

Storage: Phones either come with internal storage, like the Pre or the iPhone, or taunt you with "expandable" storage, which pretty much means they've got an empty microSD slot. If your phone comes with less than 2GB of space and has said slot, you need to fill it. Buying a microSD card is a little different than buying a regular SD card, because speed doesn't really matter, and nothing you're using your phone demands particularly high transfer speeds. This is a place to store your music, photos and videos—that's it. Buy these online, where branded 8GB cards regularly dip below $20—in stores, you'll pay much, much more. Also, don't worry too much about getting a full-sized SD adapters, as pictured above. Most phones will allow you to mount your smartphone's microSD card as mass storage when they're plugged into a computer, so removal is rarely necessary.

Cables: Pick up a spare charging cable for your phone. For most smartphones this is a simple mini/microUSB cable, while for iPhones it's an iPod dock connector. Why worry about the spare? Think of it this way: if you lose your only iPod cable, you can't listen to music until you buy another one. If you lose your only iPhone cable, you're out of touch with the rest of the world in a matter of hours.

What You Don't

Of course, the temptation of new accessories is great, and there are legions of companies waiting to seize on your post-transactional bliss. When buying smartphone accessories, proceed with caution.

A dock: Again, people have a tendency to confuse their PMPs with their phones, which may look and act similar, but are used in a completely different way. Unless you want to dock your smartphone near your bed to use as an alarm, it's going to be charging—and syncing—with your computer whenever it's not in your pocket. An impulse-purchased dock will, in all likelihood, live a lonely life. Don't let this sad thing happen!

A branded navigation mount: These are almost always overpriced, and all they really do is hold your phone in your line of sight. Just buy a dirt-cheap windshield or dash mount, buy a 12v DC converter to plug your USB charging cable into, and you've got all the functionality you need for about $20.

Cleaning Kits: Cleaning your smartphone isn't hard, and it shouldn't cost you much at all. Just follow our instructions, and avoid any smartphone-specific cleaning kits. They're a guaranteed waste.

Bluetooth anything: Bluetooth headsets can make anyone look like a dweebish soccer dad, and while they might make chatting on the phone while driving more legal, they don't really make it much safer. Just hold your phone like a normal human, put it on speakerphone, or take the call later. You should avoid Bluetooth headphones too, but for a different reason: they suck. They sound terrible, they'll drain your phone's battery and they're overpriced. If you have to buy a pair, spend as little as possible.

Getting Started

If your smartphone is a newborn, this is where we teach it to walk.

Contacts: Somehow, in over two decades of cellphone development, we haven't settled on a simple way to transfer contacts from one phone to another. Here's how you should proceed through this somehow-still-painful process:
• Get your carrier to do it. If you're upgrading handsets on one carrier, they should be able to transfer your contacts, and probably for free. If you're switching carriers, there may be a small fee. Don't spend more than five bucks.
• Use your SIM. Are you on AT&T or T-Mobile? Is your smartphone on the same carrier as your old dumbphone? Most phones will have an option to write all contacts to a SIM card, which is the little chip that your phone uses to identify itself on a cell network. Do this, pop your old card out, pop it into your new smartphone, and transfer all your contacts from the old SIM onto your new phone's memory. Sadly, this won't work with Verizon or Sprint phones, which are CDMA-based, and therefore don't have SIM cards at all.
• Google Sync. Through a protocol called SyncML, Google Sync supports quite a few features phones, and can pull all your contacts into your Google account. Your new smartphone can then yank them back down from the cloud. Bonus: they're now backed up to Google server's, too.

Email: Email, you'll find, is one of the best things about owning a smartphone. Setting up your email varies from smartphone to smartphone (iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile) and service to service (Exchange and Gmail setups will be completely different, obvious) but there are few rules of thumb to keep in mind during account setup. For example, use IMAP (versus POP) whenever you can—this will keep your messages and their read/unread statuses in sync with your desktop clients. And since most of your email downloading will be happening over 3G, set the individual message size limit at or below about 10kb. This will ensure your messages come in quickly, but also that you have something to read once they arrive.

Calendars: If you keep a Google Calendar, having it sync with your smartphone is a revelation. Android phones will automatically sync with your default Google account's calendars, as will the Pre, while the iPhone will need to be configured with CalDav. If you don't keep a calendar, your new smartphone is a good excuse to start.

Media and Syncing: Most smartphones rely on some kind of desktop software to transfer personal info, music, video and photos to and from the handset. For the iPhone, this basically means downloading iTunes—which you have to do anyway. For BlackBerry, this means downloading BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Windows Mobile phones are best served by Windows Device Center, while Android and Palm phones—and optionally Windows Phones, iPhones and BlackBerrys—play nice with doubleTwist, a cross-platform music player/media syncing app.

Converting Video: You can't just copy your torrented videos or home movies over to your smartphone; you need to downsample those videos, stat. Just download Handbrake for this—it's basically magic, and it works on Windows, OS X and Linux. These instructions are iPhone-centric, but videos converted to 320x240 h.264 will be suitable for most new smartphones.

Apps! Apps! Apps! Apps!

Without apps, smartphones are nothing. With apps, they're practically anything. Every smartphone platform has an app storefront now, from Apple's pioneering App Store to BlackBerry's App World to the Android Market, and they're all, to different extents, treasure troves.

iPhone: First stop, Gizmodo's Essential iPhone Apps Directory. These are the best of the best, and everything you need to make your iPhone into a mobile powerhouse. If you're averse to spending money on your new iPhone—this thing wasn't cheap, after all—check out our Essential Free Apps. We do regular posts and weekly roundups around here too, so just keep an eye out.

Android: It's got the second best app selection, which is to say there's some really great stuff out there. Our Essential Android Apps roundup cuts through the noise of the App Market, while our monthly roundups keep you up to date with the latest additions to the store.

BlackBerry: We cover the biggest new additions to App World, but it's best to defer to a specialist site like CrackBerry for this one—they have their own app store too, which isn't really much better or worse than BlackBerry's janky official shop.

Palm: We've just pulled one of our patented "Essential" roundups fresh out of the oven, so consult that first. Beyond that, PreCentral's official app reviews are fairly fantastic. Also worth checking out is their extensive homebrew app gallery, which has about as many decent apps in it as the official Catalog.

Windows Mobile: App development for WinMo isn't exactly picking up nowadays but there's a tremendous backlog of useful reviews and materials at WMPowerUser, WMExperts, XDA and MoDaCo. And yeah, we occasionally still do Windows Mobile app roundups, though until things get exciting again, expect less, not more.

Living Happily Ever After

Lastly, a few odds and ends to make sure your metal'n'plastic darling lives a happy life, at least before the end of its two-year contract.

How to back up your smartphone: Your smartphone probably contains as much personal data as your computer, and it's subjected to way more physical risk. Preempt the pain. Back it up.

How to keep you smartphone clean: These little machines are fantastic at collecting fingerprints, dust and grime. Wipe them off every once in a while.

Any other tips for new smartphone owners? Chuck them down in the comments. Happy Holidays!

It can't be great, truthfully. Given the bad press and public sentiment toward AT&T, it's easy to see how troops on the ground, the real people who deal with us and our reception problems everyday, maybe aren't feeling so great about the company they work for. Like the guys who work at Goldman or Lehman Bros. who had nothing to do with the risky bets that blew up the economy, they were just doing their job.

I ask because smartphones have contracts, generally and because of that they seem like a complicated thing to gift. And a personal decision! What do you think about it?

Apparently, Gorilla Glass differs from the product you might find in a typical smartphone because it allows "larger ions to penetrate the surface more deeply to increase the compression tolerance and tolerate deeper scratches." This is achieved though a aluminum-composite composition that can be made extremely thin and light because of its strength.

Corning, the company behind the glass, is hoping to expand the reach of their product to other consumer electronics and even vehicles—anything that needs to withstand the elements. And by "elements" I mean clumsy, uncoordinated types...Adam? [Smartplanet and Gorilla Glass]

Motorola's fall from grace started when they couldn't come up with a serious successor to the megapopular original Razr, so it's kind of sad to see that right up until their Android renaissance—and maybe even through it—the Razr, now in version 3, is still a core part of their business. But there's a broader point here, about how people use their phones: there are still plenty of folks lingering in the dull, barely-connected land of the dumbphone, where LG appears to be King, but they're emigrating in droves, because they crave one thing: internet:

Smart, dumb, whatever: today, phones are for going online. Which, if you believe Nielson's scores, means phones—especially smartphone—are pretty much for Google. Now, get your pencils out, and let's draw a straight line between Google's dominance on the mobile web and the mysterious but very real Nexus One. Easy, wasn't it? [Nielson]

Just head on over to the live stream and use the virtual keyboard to play a song, something resembling a song or a random and hideous mashup of notes that ruins the holidays for everyone. The installation will be on display at the Brick Lane Studio in London through January. [Theopane via Switched via TechEBlog]

AT&T's network is generally reviled. Users of the iPhone, in particular, loathe it the kind of deep hatred reserved for people who steal from charities or beat up grandmothers. More specifically still, are people in New York and San Francisco, locations where even AT&T Mobility's CEO admits the network is "performing at levels below our standards." AT&T fares the worst in JD Power's call quality ratings overall.

It's no secret that the iPhone isn't merely the embodiment of AT&T's network woes, but it's also, at least in part, the cause. The 3 percent of people responsible for 40 percent of the traffic on AT&T's network de la Vega is so fond of pointing the finger at are most assuredly iPhone users. AT&T notoriously didn't roll out MMS for the iPhone until this fall, not only months behind international carriers, but behind their own schedule, because they needed "to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic." And iPhone tethering still isn't offered by AT&T, even though international carriers do, because it "could exponentially increase traffic on the network." Congestion is a very real problem on AT&T's network, even AT&T admits that.

Yet AT&T crushed our 3G tests all over the place, not just in their backyard of Atlanta. The major consideration is that we didn't use phones to test, but 3G sticks, and we only tested data. While coverage is inherently a part of the test—if we hadn't have gotten a signal in the places we tested, or the signal was shitty, it would've affected their placement in the test, obviously (just look at T-Mobile's results in some spots)—we were mainly testing for speed. The iPhone's problem is that it drops calls, frequently, or simply doesn't connect. It has crappy reception. Other phones we've used on AT&T fare noticeably better. So it's easy, and obvious, to blame the iPhone, and its chipset as some have. (We explain why cell reception isn't perfect across the board here.)

But why isn't there an international outcry about the iPhone having garbage reception, then? It's possible, I suppose, that those networks have so much better coverage, even if the iPhone does have an inferior chipset with poor reception, it doesn't matter. It's just wrapped up in a blanket of coverage so comfy it still works fine. (And we have heard, though can't confirm, that the iPhone 3G at least used an inferior, cheaper Infineon chipset because AT&T wouldn't certify the one Apple actually wanted to use.)

So we have two contradictory piece of information. The iPhone does better internationally, and AT&T does better with other devices. So is it the network, or the phone? Probably a little of both. Help us out, engineers.

It's a shame that these screenshots don't really reveal much aside from social media integration, a music player, a dialer, and the obligatory Twitter app. That aside, is it me, or is there something familiar-feeling about the interface? [Engadget Germany via Unwired View]

It works! I've never designed an app in my life, but that didn't stop me from creating a masterpiece in, like, four minutes.

As far as I can tell this is something like a full development SDK, insofar as the regular MojoSDK can be considered a full developement SDK. That is to say, while anyone with any development experience will have no problem creating apps with it—in fact, a layperson with a few spare afternoons could probably make something—they're still going to be of the same web-app-like caliber we've gotten used to in the App Catalog. Games, modal UIs, and a lot of the advanced features that make Android and iPhone apps shine are a little beyond Ares' reach, I think. Still, pretty cool stuff. [Palm]

Specifically, if you jump back a year to Q2 2008, when Palm lost an astonishing $508m—no small feat for a company that shipped less than half a million phones during the period—things are downright rosy right now. If you look back to Q1 of this year, though, not so much:

The company shipped a total of 783,000 smartphone units during the quarter, representing a 5 percent decrease from the first quarter of fiscal year 2010

Despite launching a second phone and expanding their international reach with more carriers, Palm's sales have slowed over the last few months, not picked up. CEO Jon Rubenstein is stil optimistic, but that's his job:

We are continuing to execute strongly against our long-term strategy with the delivery of Palm Pixi, the new carrier launches completed this quarter, and the upcoming opening of Palm's full developer program. We're still in the early stages of a long race, and we're energized by the opportunity to compete in this exciting market.

It doesn't take a genius or an insider to know what's wrong with the Pre—its lack of serious app development means that people view it as more of a feature phone than a smartphone—and Rubenstein clearly knows this, and the webOS concept still has a ton of potential. But this is an issue of dollars: if Palm can't start turning this potential into real cash, it'll never get fully realized. Rumors of a Verizon rollout are promising, but they're not a sure thing. And alone, they probably wouldn't be enough—the Pre and Pixi aren't riding on particularly new tech, so Palm needs something fresh to remain a serious competitor.

Anyway, hey, CES is coming up. Do something! [AllThingsD]

They already had the January 5th date a few days ago, so this second confirmation of the same date might make it a bit more legit.

"In the long term Google will become a seller and get commission from operators," the source said, adding that other operators are expected to follow T-Mobile's lead eventually and agree to Google's terms.

Reuters also quotes Baird Research analyst Will Power on how Google's choice to market their own phone shakes up the smartphone market, but mostly screws other Android makers:

"We expect the launch of a new competitive device to be directionally negative for most of the existing smart phone markers, including Apple, Research in Motion, Nokia Oyg, HTC, Motorola Inc, Palm Inc, Samsung and others, while perhaps most negative for the existing Android partners."

If Google's choice to go the traditional route with carriers is true, it would, of course, dash any possibility that they might be giving this thing away for free. Let's just hope the unlocked version comes cheap. [Reuters]

As for what the Tegra 2 is, nobody really knows, because the closest Nvdia execs will get to a spec rundown is to offer vague promises of MORE: evidently it will be at least twice as powerful as its predecessor, which was was impressive in its own right. We'll get a sense of how powerful it is at CES, but the major point Nvidia would like to make is that unlike last time, the Tegra 2 will actually get used:

At CES we are going to make a major announcement about Tegra family. It is highly possible that we will see some very interesting form-factors coming out at the same time. [There will be products] shown by our partners using the next-generation Tegra device. You are going to see roll-outs and deployments of tablet PCs, smartbooks, netbooks, MIDs throughout the first half [of the year]; and then you will see major roll-outs of smartphones in the second half

This jibes with chatter from the last few months that companies like Samsung, Nintendo and even Nvidia themselves have suddenly started working on Tegra hardware; we just didn't know until now that it'd be next gen. What we still don't know is what that means: If the original Tegra could decode 1080p video, what can the new one do? Decode 1080p video more enthusiastically? [XbitLabs]

Android's most serious problem right now is fragmentation: with each new phone, it seems, comes a different version of the OS. In theory, these differences are superficial, and come down to handset manufacturers' and carriers' custom interfaces, which sit atop a mostly unchanged Android core. In practice, it's much worse.

Just look at the current top tier of Android devices. The Motorola Droid runs Android 2.0. The HTC MyTouch 3G and G1 on T-Mobile run Android 1.6. The HTC Hero, a newer phone than the MyTouch and the G1, is still stuck on 1.5, along with the even newer Motorola Cliq, which shares one parent—Motorola—with the 2.0-loaded Droid. Why is this something to worry about? Remember Google Maps Navigation, the free turn-by-turn app for Android? It only works on Android 2.0 and 1.6. An app written by Google doesn't even work on every new Google phone. Imagine how things are with third party apps. (Spoiler: it's a shitshow.)

Google's been fairly diligent about updating the free, open-source heart of Android moving forward at a steady pace, and supplying handset manufacturers with the tools they need to keep their handsets running the latest software. That said, Google still deserves some of the blame here. That their software updates include new, exclusive functionality is fine on its own. And yeah, their eagerness to allow for Android to be skinned and deeply customized by handset manufacturers is fine on its own—in fact, it's implicit in the project's open source ethos. But mixed together, these ambitions create a gurgling software slurry of incompatibility, user experience inconsistency and general frustration. (See: Samsung Behold II) So what happened?

The problem is in the model. Android updates seed out through carriers, over the air or with special installers. This is because the updates are their responsibility: once handset manufacturers (and carriers, through handset manufacturers) have built their own version of Android, they've effectively taken it out of the development stream. Updating it is their responsibility, which they have to choose to uphold. Or not! Who cares? The phones are already sold. And there's very little to motivate a carrier or handset manufacturer to update their Android phones, because the consequences tend to fall on Google: If Android fragments, the App Market doesn't work. The public sours. Android starts to suck. This is where the Nexus One comes in.

Sold without a carrier, software updates for the Nexus One will be in Google's hands. They will be able to keep it up to date as Android develops, without having to depend on some other company—or companies—not to drop the ball. Users won't have to bother learning Google's esoteric dessert-themed version codenames, and life will be better. This approach to software updates already has a case study: the iPhone. There's a good reason Apple didn't entrust AT&T with keeping the iPhone up to date, and that they didn't want the company that actually manufacturers the phone—Foxconn—to have any responsibility for its software. Smartphone software is finicky and complicated, and so is the experience of using it. It needs to be tightly controlled to remain consistent, and because apps are the most important part of a smartphone platform nowadays, consistency is life or death.

Without totally changing what the Android project is, Google can't put an absolute stop to fragmentation. What they can do is provide an example of how an Android phone should be done. With the Nexus One, Google probably isn't getting into the business of making hardware; they're just trying, in their passive, Googly way, to regain control of a project that's spiraling toward chaos.

Update: Some input from someone who works in a major carrier's device development group:

There is TONS of incentive for carriers to update their
software. Take a look at Verizon hosting the only Android 2.0 device.
Are you going to tell me that Sprint and T-Mobile wouldn't love to
have their Android devices on 2.0 yesterday?

The truth is, there's very little incentive for the Handset maker to
provide an update. All those phones are already sold and in the
carrier's inventory. Any investment in updating those models will
bring them no additional cash flow. However focusing on their next
model will.

He's partly right: carriers have a motivation to keep their software up to date, in that they are the ones who have to deal most with customers. Handset manufacturers are the one's with the least motivation, since their sale has already been made. But in branding a handset with their name, effectively selling it as their product, and assuming responsibility for seeding updates, a carrier becomes responsible for making sure their customers have up-to-date software, and exerting pressure on handset manufacturers if they don't hold up their end. —Thanks, David!

[Infinitecontinues via Etsi via Kotaku]

Which is what matters at this point, really. The WSJ continues to insist it'll be sold "directly to consumers" (emphasis mine) and Google will "market" it, so let's assume it isn't just a dev or template phone, but a genuine consumer play. Even with Google's enormous weight, a $600—or even $400—unlocked phone does face some harsh realities, even if it does send a strong kind message as The Google Phone. If Google subsidizes it themselves, though, making it actually affordable in a "we just want everybody to use the internet (and therefore, Google)" kind of play, it'd be as huge as everybody panting about it says it would be. If not, well, you know.

Sprint saying they'd support this business model is interesting, BTW—my guess at this point, is that Verizon said no because it likes being deeply involved in, and tied to, the phones on its network. In Verizon's world, it's all about the network, not the phones, so it's easy to see where being reduced to a mere contract service wouldn't sit well with its sense of self.

Still curious, though, are these two bits, that "Google focused more on designing a phone in the past year, one person familiar with its efforts said, as the company battled to get some partners to accept its software" and that "Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone, from the applications that run on it to the look and feel of each screen, they added." 'Cause, uh, haven't they designed the experience and applications on every stock Android phone? And it's weirder still, cause Engadget's close-up photos show 2.1, which, on the face of it, looks a whole lot like 2.0, just with a few new interface elements (more desktops displayed using a webOS card-like interface above, and 3D flourishes). The only thing "more Google-y" is that it comes with Goggles by default. So, um, "huh," I say to the WSJ.

We keep hearing first quarter of next year is when Google's loosing this thing, so even if Google's brilliant plan—a sekrit phone in the hands of a thousand people—holds tight, we'll know soon enough what's really going on here. [WSJ, Engadget]

The more three-dimensional interface is designed by The Astonishing Tribe, who also designed Android's UI, as well as interfaces for Sony Ericsson and pretty much every other phonemaker at one point or another.

The major thing here is a couple of new gestures: A squeeze gesture, which is detected by additional accelerometers, and a seamless touchpad embedded in the back, so you can scroll by stroking the back of the phone, where you're not hiding the screen. Tilt also gets a lot more play here, the idea being that you can more easily use it one-handed.

The phone's a concept, led by Synaptics and using hardware like their ClearPad 3000, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the basic concepts show up in phones from LG and others, since a lot of companies use Synaptics' tech in their phones.

UPDATE: Here's a slightly prettier video directly from TAT:

Synaptics Debuts FuseTM Next-Generation Mobile Phone Concept
Synaptics, Texas Instruments, Immersion, TheAlloy, and The Astonishing Tribe demonstrate collaborative design to drive the future of mobile interaction beyond the touchscreen

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – December 14, 2009 – Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ: SYNA), a leading developer of human interface solutions for mobile computing, communications, and entertainment devices, today introduced FuseTM, a collaborative mobile phone concept, demonstrating the future of user interaction for handsets. Integrating for the first time multiple interface technologies-including multi-touch capacitive sensing, haptic feedback, 3-D graphics, and force, grip, and proximity sensing-the Fuse concept phone showcases exciting new mobile device usage models. In addition, Fuse demonstrates to device manufacturers the value of ecosystem collaborations providing a model for designing multi- modal interfaces that will optimize the user experience on next-generation handheld device. Every step in the value chain affects and is affected by the end product. A truly collaborative approach takes advantage of each partner's unique contributions in benefiting the user.

Beyond Today's Touchscreen
Fuse extends the now-prevalent touchscreen-based user experience first unveiled in August 2006 with Synaptics' award-winning Onyx mobile concept. With Fuse's bold lineup of innovative interface technologies, Synaptics and partners tackle the difficulty of single- handed usage and the need to look at the screen-two key challenges faced by on-the-go users in current-generation touchscreen phones.
Fuse's innovative sensing technologies surrounding the entire device enable quick, intuitive, single-handed navigation. For example, grip sensing achieved via force and capacitive touch sensors on the sides of the phone allows the user to execute common controls such as pan and scroll. In addition to the novel side sensors, Fuse introduces for the first time, 2D navigation from the back of the phone. This feature offers yet another mode of effective and fun single-handed control without obstructing the display or enhanced usability, Fuse combines multiple sensory input and feedback technologies including active 3-D graphics and next-generation haptic effects.

"Consumers have many options when it comes to choosing a smartphone, and though many phones are loaded with applications to simplify one's life, they often accomplish just the opposite," said William Stofega, research manager for mobile device technology and trends at IDC. "Synaptics partnering with innovative industry leaders to deliver an intelligent concept device that has the consumers' lifestyles in mind will help showcase the true potential of the smartphone."

Collaborative Design
The Fuse mobile phone concept is the result of a unique collaboration between Synaptics and four global partners-TheAlloy, The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), Immersion, and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI). With human interface and digital lifestyle in mind, the Fuse design team created a stunning and functional user interface with innovative new modes of sensing input, and visual and haptic feedback.
Each partner provided valuable expertise and contributions to the project:
• TheAlloy led the user experience and overall product design efforts.
• TAT enabled the effective 3-D environment and lent their extensive user interface
software design skills.
• Immersion made possible the tactile feedback, ensuring an integrated and satisfying
experience.
• TI's OMAPTM 3630 processor provided the framework and platform to leverage the
enhanced multimedia, graphics and imaging features that consumers crave.

Additionally, Synaptics' ClearPadTM, NavPointTM, and TouchButtonsTM solutions are used in the Fuse mobile concept to offer unique capabilities-such as two-finger input, proximity sensing, grip sensing, text entry, and high-resolution finger input-providing precise pointing and navigation that can dramatically improve and enhance the user experience with a touchscreen.

Future handset innovation will rely on the relationship between technology design and designers to unlock the potential of mobile phones as an ideal computing platform. Fuse illustrates to OEMs the advances in Synaptics' sensing technologies and the collaborative effort that will inspire a new wave of multi-modal input design.

"The best touch experience requires the expertise and collaboration of ecosystem leaders to optimize what the user sees and feels," said Gopal Garg, senior vice president of Synaptics' handheld business unit and corporate marketing. "The improved sensory experience of Fuse will drive handset innovation to evolve, taking the current generation of touch-based interaction to the next level of human-device interaction."

"The Fuse project has demonstrated the power of multi-party collaboration to deliver experience-led innovation, said Gus Desbarats, chairman, TheAlloy. "Each partner within the Fuse project has helped to show the effect that leading-edge technology can deliver when applied with design thinking."

"Exceptional user experience differentiates the best designs," said Craig Vachon, senior vice president and general manager of Immersion's touch line of business. "Fuse exemplifies the power of collaboration and realizes what is possible by integrating innovative technology, including Immersion's next-generation TouchSense solutions. Working with these partners has been gratifying; Fuse is further validation that our haptics technology brings to life the power of touch and makes devices more intuitive, satisfying, and fun to use."

"Providing our technology in order to showcase user experience paradigms of next generation devices is one of the key ingredients that keep TAT ahead of the trends in mobile user interfaces", says Charlotta Falvin, chief executive officer of The Astonishing Tribe. "Realizing design ideas that push the limits of technology like the Fuse UI does is one of our passions."

"The world is changing, and so is the way people interact with their mobile devices. TI is excited to be a part of the innovative Fuse concept that reiterates the significant headway we're making to advance mobile user experiences," said Fred Cohen, director of worldwide ecosystem partners for Texas Instruments. "TI's OMAP platform works in sync with these other impressive technologies to bring big-screen, life-like capabilities to consumers' fingertips."