Nvidia Chooses Windows CE Over Android on Netbooks

Nvidia Inc. sees more immediate promise in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows CE over Android for ARM-based netbooks because of its maturity compared to Google’s operating system.
Mike Rayfield, general manager for Nvidia’s mobile business unit, said Nvidia preferred Microsoft’s Windows CE over Android because of CE’s maturity. He said Android currently has a rough user interface.
For smartbooks, Nvidia is working with Microsoft to optimize Windows CE when it runs on Tegra. The counterpart to Nvidia’s Ion platform for Intel Atom-based netbooks, Tegra bundles an ARM CPU with specialized chips designed by Nvidia for graphics, HD video encoding and decoding, stereo sound and more.
Nvidia chose to work with Windows CE first, said Rayfield, because it “is a rock-solid operating system that has been shipped billions of times.” Windows CE also has a “low memory footprint and a good collection of apps,” Rayfield said.
Nvidia is working with Google to accelerate Android, which is based on Linux, when running on Tegra hardware. But it will be about a year before that delivers for smartbooks, due to existing limitations in Android, he said.

MyTouch 3G is T-Mobile second Android phone that the company would be releasing in the USA. T-Mobile is touting the ways in which the myTouch 3G, and by extension the Android experience, can be personalized, noting that users can customize wallpapers, menus and icons.
The myTouch 3G is one of three other Android-based phones that are expected to hit the market in the near future. One of the phones, known as the HTC Magic, is already available in Spain and the United Kingdom.
The smartphone features a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen display, no physical keyboard and a 3.2-megapixel camera. The myTouch 3G also has WiFi capabilities, video playback and a music player that supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, OGG, and RM media files and comes pre-loaded with a 4 GB microSD card.
The phone will run on T-Mobile’s GSM-based Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) 3G network and on Wi-Fi networks. T-Mobile was the last major wireless carrier to launch its own 3G network, as the company only put its UMTS services online last May.
In addition to support for Google’s Gmail application, the myTouch 3G includes built-in Microsoft Exchange server support. Instant messaging support for Gtalk, AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo! messaging is also included, and there is even a voice dialing application and speakerphone for truly hands free phone calls.
T-Mobile said that the myTouch 3G will sell for $199.99 with a new two-year service contract, and that current T-Mobile customers will be able to pre-order it beginning July 8. Pre-ordered units will begin shipping in late July and the phone would go on sale nationally in early August.

The LG Tritan AX840 is now available at Alltel Wireless. This new handset offers a 3-inch full touchscreen display with a resolution of 240 x 400, a full QWERTY keyboard, a 3MP camera with video recording, GPS (Alltel Navigation), a microSD card slot, a voice recognition, a full internet browser, E-mail and EV-DO Rev A connectivity.
The Tritan features a GPS chipset and many of Alltel’s signature applications, including E-mail, Navigation, NuTsie and more. The phone is also Bluetooth capable for hands-free headsets.
The LG Tritan costs $79.99 with a contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate. It can be purchased online and from Alltel’s stores across the US.

Alltel has announced the availability of RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 on its shelves, bringing with it 3G support. With a silver casing, the Alltel’s BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 sports two high-resolution color displays (one external, one internal), a 2.0MP camera (with zoom, flash and video recording), microSD card slot and a SureType keyboard that’s not quite QWERTY, but close enough for most.
It support BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) and BlackBerry Enterprise Server, not to mention voice-activated dialing and speakerphone capability. As social networks expand, RIM is also touting this phone’s ability to hit up MySpace, Flickr and Facebook as well as IM services such as Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger.
Other features include an onboard GPS chipset with BlackBerry Maps will allow users to navigate the world and the Flip also allows users to sync their music collections with iTunes and Windows Media Player.
The RIM BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 is available now for $80after a mail-in rebate with a two-year contract.

According to the news made available by The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Communications Commission plans to investigate the exclusive arrangements between wireless carriers and cell phone makers to decide if they are fair for consumers.
This was announced by Julius Genachowski, whose nomination as FCC chairman was approved by the Senate committee. He stated that he wants to review the exclusive manufacturer-carrier handset deals. It should be recalled that some lawmakers have expressed their concerns over the said exclusivity and advised the FCC to investigate the matter.
Such exclusive agreements are common in the cell phone market, such as the one that locks iPhone owners into an AT&T service plan. The exclusive deals typically last six months to a year, after which other carriers can also sell the phone model to their customers.

The Opera Mobile 9.7 is a new version of Opera’s web browser and its latest software released for Windows Mobile smartphones.
The newly released public beta features Opera Turbo, the company’s compression technology that offloads Web page rendering to Opera servers.
Simply put, the Turbo is Opera server based solution so you now can get the power of Opera Mobile with the speed and data savings found in Opera Mini. It also includes the company’s latest Presto 2.2 rendering engine — the same engine used in Opera desktop. The company claims this will display Web pages up to 25% faster.
Opera Mobile 9.7 also has full support for dynamic Web technologies such as Ajax and Flash for accessing popular sites like Facebook and YouTube. Other improvements in Opera Mobile 9.7 are the improved widget manager which runs independently from the web browser, Google Gears support and hardware acceleration with OpenGL ES support.

Consolidating on its commitment to the security of its products and services, Palm has announced the release of webOS 1.0.2, a firmware update for the Palm Pre. This goes a long way o show that it takes all vulnerability disclosures seriously and has a process in place to work quickly to resolve them.
Palm notes that webOS 1.0.2 is a general bug fix release, containing many bugs fixes that would have held up the initial release to launch. As reported on the MyPre.com, the 67MB over-the-air download increases stability and adds a new alarm clock. Some users noted having to restore their devices from a Palm Profile backup after the update.
Similarly, Palm’s Dave Whalen (Vice President of Global Sales) mentioned last Friday that the Mojo SDK would, in fact, be arriving soon. What soon exactly means to Palm is unsure, since their definition of SDK is also not clear enough.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 has allegedly been leaked on the internet with details of the mobile’s official specifications. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 is the unannounced successor to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 which is yet to be officially announced by the company but rumors about its specs are already spreading like forest fire around the web.
According to the news, this successor phone would feature the same angled slide-out QWERTY keyboard, along with a larger 3.5-inch WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) touchscreen OLED display. The XPERIA X2 is believed to have an 8.1-megapixel auto focus camera capable of 30fps video recording, A-GPS and of course that slide-out hardware keyboard.
It has also been rumored that it will run on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will sport 3G with HSDPA support. Also based on the previous leak it will come with an 8 megapixel auto focus shooter and a LED flash. Also, the leak shows that the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 will come with 256 MB of RAM and a Qualcomm MSM7200 chipset with a 528 MHz processor just like the XPERIA X1.

According to a report made available by CNET, Chip maker ARM has announced that arrangement is underway for the company to start shipping multi-core processors for mobile phones in 2010.
Speaking in a phone interview, ARM Wireless Segment Manager James Bruce told the publication that mobile phones will begin shipping with dual-core Cortex-A9 processors, the company’s next generation chipsets, in 2010.
The company stated that the new A9 chipsets are more powerful and use less power in day-to-day use, according to the company. In another interview with Brook Crothers, ARM revealed that smartphones will start shipping with the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor in 2010. The Palm Pre was the first smartphone to ship with the ARM Cortex-A8 single core processor.

The relationship between some handset manufacturers and network carriers may soon suffer a set back if the motion being moved by the US senators is adopted. The Senators want the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review the exclusivity arrangements between handset manufacturers and network carriers and how they affect competition, as reported by Reuters.
The senators who expressed their concerns about competition and choice and its effect on fairness in the market stated in a letter to FCC that “We ask that you examine this issue carefully and act expeditiously should you find that exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace.”
In the US, it is not uncommon for some service providers and handset manufacturers to forge such agreement. We have recently reported some cases which involve players such as Sprint, AT&T, and Apple.