[Spore Doorbells via Apartment Therapy]

Right now, the anything-goes Android Market only supports free apps, but that should change right around the G1's launch, at least if Google is serious about having premiere apps populate the store from the start, like high end games. There's a lot of fantastic freeness to be hadlike out of the Android Developer Challenge or as Apple's App Store showsbut some developers want some hard coin for their code, and not just evil corporations like EA.

On the other hand, EA has experience with digital distribution and you can sideload apps without going through the Android Market, so why don't they sell them straight through EA's site? [Pocket Gamer via Crave]

Real Soccer: Real Soccer got a quick play during the Let's Rock event and hit the store this week. For $10 you can play as 198 real teams in 12 different stadiums with FIFA 96-era graphics, all using an on-scree D-pad and A+B button. The other demo at Let's Rock, Need For Speed: Undercover, is still under development and will drop in November. Real Soccer is $10

TouchGrind: Due to be released in October, we got a look this week at Touchgrind, a novel skateboard game which is billing itself as the "first true multitouch game" let's you do tricks and flips with a mini deck, racking up points for combos. From the demo video, it looks pretty great, especially if you were as obsessed with the old Tony Hawk PS1 games as my friends and I were.

Air Sharing: Air Sharing looks like it may be the king so far of the file storage apps—our friends over at Lifehacker gave it a shakedown and liked what they saw. It uses WebDAV to show up as a shared folder on Mac, Windows or Linux systems which allows you to save files to your iPhone's flash memory, and provides a URL for devices on the same network to connect to and download the files to another machine. And best of all, unlike many of the other iPhone file vaults, it's free. Until September 22, that is, so grab it.

Roller Coaster Physics: Really cool idea for an app that records G-forces from your accelerometers and displays the results on a trend line. It's designed to be used to measure exactly how much force is causing your stomach to drop at Six Flags, but I don't see why you couldn't use it in a car or anything else, when you want to monitor G-forces. And it's free.

Civil Aircraft Identification Guide: These guys had me in mind. As an aviation geek I love spotting jets at the airport, but as anyone else who shares my hobby knows, sometimes telling your 737s from you A319s (look for the slanted section of the tail fin on the 37, but still) is tough. Airplane ID gives you top and side views with stats on 40 of the major airliners. Cool stuff. $2

More Games in Brief:

• EA's Spore Origins hit the store this Sunday - check out our hands-on video here. $10
• Asphalt 4: Elite Racing will be Need For Speed's number one competitor: as it's been camped out on the top ten most popular apps list. This driving sim gives you on-screen D-pad or accelerometer steering, and lets up to four players join in multiplayer games on the same Wi-Fi network. $10
• And of course Light Saber Unleashed (formerly Phone Saber). This one isn't a DS killer, but thank God it's back.
• And as commenter Marcelo points out, Cro-Mag Rally (Mario Kart for cavemen) is on sale for $2 this week, down from $10. Good deal.

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, 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, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good long weekend everybody.

As we saw at E3 and WWDC, the iPhone version of Spore is Spore Origins, which is limited to the "primordial ooze" stage you see here, with a limited version of the Creature Creator thrown in for tweaking your bug cosmetically. On the plus side, it's simple and a quick diversion, and it's fun combo-ing your way through 35 increasingly difficult levels of munching little floaties. You can also import photos from your iPhone camera to texture-map on your creatures (Benny's Michigan Fab 5 tee).

But on the downside, the game suffers from the same control awkwardness that all of the accelerometer-only games do—as you can see in our video, the camera had a tough time keeping focus because you're always dramatically moving the phone to try to reign in your creature. A training stage featured a level-like bubble for each axis that showed you when you were at the zero-point, which was incredibly helpful—too bad it disappeared after training.

And most disappointingly, Spore for iPhone does not connect with the greater Spore hive in any way, meaning you won't see any procedurally generated creatures made by real other players of the game via Spore's central server. Kind of a weird choice for such a connected phone, and most confusingly, EA says the simpler Java based game for most other cellphones does in fact have connectivity to the greater spore world.

There's still some vagueness with release date (EA's site still only says "sometime in September") but all other Spore platforms launch in the US this Sunday. Look for it then or soon thereafter in the App Store for a price that'll probably be in the $10 and below range.

This week's app coverage on Giz:

• Remember what it was like to buy a CD? Apple's plans to include lyrics and additional album art via an app download for certain albums will help you remember.
• Continunig to carry the torch for political apps is Election '08 - a $1 app that collects poll data, electoral vote projections, and tons of other election data.
• And at CEDIA, all of the home automation systems are racing each other to release remote control applications, turning your iPhone into a capable touchscreen control surface for opening the blinds from across the street or jacking up the AC if your cat gets hot.

For even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – September 5, 2008 – EA Mobile™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), today announced that Spore™ Origins, an original game for the iPhone™ and iPod® touch, will be available this month. The game takes full advantage of the devices’ built-in accelerometer as players tilt, turn and twist their way through a world made of primordial ooze. In conjunction with the launch of Spore Origins, EA Mobile also announces a list of nine games in development for both the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms.

Eat-or-be-eaten in Spore Origins! Designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod touch, Spore Origins uses the platforms’ motion-sensing technology to let gamers navigate a primordial tidepool on a quest to evolve. Feast on the weak and flee from the strong through two exciting modes and 35 challenging levels. Pinch, pull, and poke your creation in the Creature Editor, customizing the texture, shape and body parts to improve your offense, defense, perception and movement as you evolve over millions of years.

““We’re really excited to bring Spore Origins to the iPhone and iPod touch,” said Travis Boatman, Vice President Worldwide Studios at EA Mobile. “By leveraging the unique capabilities of these devices, players can customize their own creatures and shape their destiny in an exciting evolutionary journey. ”

EA Mobile today also announced nine titles in development for the iPhone and iPod touch, pending regional availability. This list includes YAHTZEE Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon™, Mahjong, MONOPOLY: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed™ Undercover, and The Sims™ 3.

Spore Origins will be available globally from the Apple App Store on iPhone and iPod touch, or by simply visiting www.eamobile.com from an iPhone. Additional versions of Spore Origins are also available for the iPod, as well as other mobile devices. All iPod games are available for the third-generation iPod nano, iPod classic and fifth-generation iPod and can be sent as a gift using the iTunes gifting feature (www.itunes.com).

The DS version of Spore is already a very different, much smaller game than the truly galactic full-scale universe you're getting on the Mac and PC. It's like Spore Lite. And the iPhone version is even simpler than that—it's basically just the "spore" stage of Spore, totally top-down and 2D, extremely simple. In a way, it's just a glorified version of the cellphone games that people who'd pick up a DS or real portable gaming system would totally ignore. There's no crossover or competing audience with the DS version—it's basically just a distraction, and that's what most games on the iPhone will be.

Will games on the iPhone be better than most other cellphone games? Probably. It has the juice, the platform and the controls. But it won't knock a DS or PSP out of your bag by any means. It's just not the same space. [Forbes]