PRESS RELEASE: MOTOBLUR™ Debuts in Canada

PRESS RELEASE: MOTOBLUR™ Debuts in Canada – Say Hello to the First Phones with Social Skills
Only MOTOBLUR organizes all your messages from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter along with your emails and texts, and streams them to a single live widget for immediate reply – right from the home screen

March 03, 2010

TORONTO, Ont. — March 3, 2010 — Motorola Canada today announced that MOTOBLURTM, its revolutionary social service for Android-powered devices, is coming to Canada with all three national wireless carriers in the first half of 2010.

MOTOBLUR is the only solution to sync all your friends, posts, feeds, messages, e-mails, photos and much more—from sources such as Facebook®, Twitter®, MySpace, Gmail™, Yahoo! and work email—with continuous updates, automatically delivering them to your home screen for immediate reply. MOTOBLUR delivers these updates in easy-to-view streams, so there is no need to switch between different mobile applications to keep up with the latest content, allowing you to spend less time managing your life and more time living it.

“We are thrilled to be bringing Canadians three unique MOTOBLUR handsets with all the major wireless carriers,” said Rick Gadd, Vice President and Sales General Manager, Mobile Devices, Motorola Canada. “With MOTOBLUR, we are differentiating the Android experience and delivering phones that are truly instinctive and socially smart.”

Life: Organized, Streamed and Delivered
Only MOTOBLUR automatically delivers conversation threads, friend updates, stories, links, photos and more, to live widgets on your home screen for immediate reply:

Happenings: View your social site updates in one spot with the live Happenings application. Every friend feed, status update, wall post, bulletin and photo upload is automatically delivered and ready for immediate reply, anyway you like.
Messages: Quickly scroll through the Messages application for a snapshot of current work or personal emails, social site messages, and texts, and view messages all together in the universal inbox or separately by source.
Social Status: Blast your status right from the home screen and even save time by updating your status to one or all your social networks at once.
News Feeds: Keep track of your favorite news feeds, sports scores or even celebrity gossip without leaving the home screen.
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HTC Announces Legend, Desire and Mini

At Mobile World Congress today, HTC announced 3 new devices based on Windows Mobile and Android operating systems.

The HTC Mini is based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and brings the experience of the HD2 to a smaller footprint. The HD2 experience is truly something special. If HTC can make this into a smaller device, it will be interesting to see and use. The single best thing on the HD2 is the screen. If they can pack the processor and power into a smaller footprint, will the device be as attractive? It’s a hard question to answer. With a smaller screen, they will need to make sure that the smaller screen is just as brilliant as it’s larger brother or it won’t succeed.

The HTC Legend and Desire are both Android based devices. The Legend is like version 2 of the Hero, adding a AMOLED screen LED Flash, optical trackball, a faster processor – 600MHz, and some more memory.  The Desire is HTC’s version of their Nexus One phone, but with an optical trackball and an extra button.

You can read check out the press release over at MobilityMinded – HTC Mini, and HTC Legend, Desire. And then let us know what you think of HTC’s latest devices.

How To: Google Buzz from Windows Mobile and Android

Google’s Buzz is doing quite well so far, but in many ways it seems to have been rushed to market. It’s crazy that you can access a Google service from only a specific version of Android (2.X). While the iPhone has full support, if you own an Android 1.5 or 1.6 or a Windows Mobile phone you are out of luck. Well, that is until now…

Jay Glogovsky posted a link in a Google Buzz post that will actually allow you to use the service on platforms that are not currently supported.

I present the “Link of Golden Awesomeness”: https://m.google.com/app/buzz/#~buzz:view=nearby

So far I have tested this on Windows Mobile and Android 1.5 and it works well. For Windows Mobile it did not seem to work in the default browser; I was using Opera Mobile 10 beta 3 and it worked just fine. In Android I just used the default browser with no problem.

So, start buzzing from the road, even if you aren’t iPhoning it!

If you try this on another phone and it works let us know and we will mention it in this post.

Mobile Wars: Mobile Market Place

It seems that every mobile operating system has its own Market Place. A short while ago, there was no on-device market place to download and purchase applications. (Yes, I know that some app portals did build a device client, but it was poorly implemented and never received any traction) But are all market places created equal? The answer is a flat out – NO.

Google’s market place is loaded with applications. In much the same way as Apple advertises, there is an app for that with Android.  Perhaps it’s not as full, but I never had a problem finding an app to do what I was looking for. Further, almost all the apps are free. Sure, free doesn’t help put food on the table for the developers family. It does appeal to my cheap side however. You may find an application here and there that charges, but overall that’s rare.

 

When you take a look at Microsoft’s market place for mobile, you’ll have a much harder time finding free applications. While I don’t mind paying for the right app, it’s also much harder to find the right app.  There are few applications available on Microsoft’s platform. In fact, the market place is lacking so much, that there is now a free alternative called OpnMarket – which has substantially more applications that Microsoft’s version.

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Mobile Wars: Managing Your Email On The Go

Email is one of the more popular features on today’s phones. If you’re not doing push email, then chances are you’re heavy into texting. Staying connecting with work, friends and family while on the go is what a lot of smartphone users are looking to do. When it comes to work, there is no question that Exchange is the dominate email server. And because of that, any serious mobile OS needs to have some sort of Exchange supported backed it.

There’s no question that Microsoft has spent a considerable amount of time building up the Exchange connectivity on their Windows Phone devices. From remote wipe of the phone, to looking up contacts in the Global Address Book, Windows Phones have just about everything you could ask for when it comes to messaging. The biggest feature that Microsoft has yet to add is support for multiple Exchange accounts.  Support for this is starting to show up in other platforms. Microsoft needs to keep their mobile messaging experience as the best on the block and the one to beat. If they want to stay in this game, of course.

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How to Hard Reset the HTC Hero

The HTC Hero has quickly become a popular Android device. If you have picked up a used device, or perhaps you’ve managed to install too many apps and crashed the device, there is a way to restore it back to factory settings. In the past, Darren posted about how to hard reset an Android phone from the menus on the device. The steps he posted work perfectly on the Hero, but what if the device won’t boot? No need to worry, there’s still hope. Just follow the steps below, and you’ll have a factory fresh install on your device in no time at all.

If the device is on, turn it off.  If you can’t turn it off, remove the battery! Now, with the phone off, press and hold the Home and Back keys. Keep pressing on those keys and then press the Power/End button, but don’t hold that button down. The reset process will start after a short time, at which point you can release the Home and Back keys. That’s all there is to it.  Please post and let us know how it works for you.

Mobile Wars: Platform Fragmentation

Platform fragmentation has long been an issue that Microsoft has struggled with. So many hardware partners, combined with a large number of network carrier partnership has made it difficult for Microsoft to provide patches and updates for Windows Mobile.

Typically, Microsoft would release a patch or build of Windows Mobile to the hardware manufacturer.  Windows Mobile is never sold directly to the consumer. The hardware manufacturer always makes some tweaks for drivers or customizations for their devices and then makes it available to the networks.  Then, after some testing, it’s finally offered to the consumer. However, if either the carrier or the hardware manufacturer decides that the update is not significant enough, then the update doesn’t continue and the consumer loses out.

The end result of all this, is that some devices are upgraded to the latest version, while others are left behind. There’s no way for a customer that is experiencing a specific bug, to get that update if their carrier or the hardware manufacturer has decided that it’s just not significant enough to warrant releasing an update.

Google is heading down the same path. They don’t provide the OS directly to the consumer. With more and more manufacturers releasing Android devices, we are starting to see devices that get left behind and are not getting that update passed along to them.

I’ve been using the Telus version of the HTC Hero for a little while now. This device is running Android 1.5. Since the device was released, there has been 3 version of Android released – 1.6, 2.0, and now 2.1. The HTC Hero on Sprint has seen an upgrade, but not the Telus device. With a brand new device, it’s already old and outdated and can’t run some of the latest Google apps.

Both platforms are heading down the wrong path here and it’s only going to cause pain and confusion for customers. Certainly, there are difficulties with providing updates to the customer. Updates need to flow quickly from the top all the way down to the consumer without breaking hardware customizations, or network tweaks that have been done.

I have to give both platforms a fail in this category. I expect more from these guys, and the consumer deserves a better experience without feeling like they need to buy a new device every 6-10 months.

Mobile Wars: Microsoft and Google Face Off on the Mobile Front

Google’s Android has been grabbing a fair share of the market over the last year or so.  While it may have struggled a little out of the gate, Google has worked hard to improve the OS and bring it to a wider audience.

There’s no question that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has declined over the same period of time. Lack of updates combined with a core OS that hasn’t changed in almost 5 years, has lead to a significant decline in consumers perception. Its been said that Microsoft is done in the mobile space and version 7 of Windows Mobile will be the final version. There’s no doubt in my mind that Microsoft is in this for the long haul. They haven’t come this far just to stumble and hand it all over to Google.  I expect we’ll see some significant changes from Microsoft before the year is done.

Over the next couple weeks I will be posting a number of articles that compare the two platforms in an effort to help shine a light on the strengths and differences between these two dominate players.

I know that there are other companies working hard in the mobile space like Apple, RIM, and Nokia.  This series of articles is aimed at comparing Google and Microsoft as I find these two platforms are very closely aligned. For a number of reasons that I won’t get into now, I feel that Apple, Rim and Nokia fall into a different category.

If you’re looking for ways to be informed when these articles are posted, you can follow us on Twitter, or grab our RSS feed.

CES: HP’s Android Technology Demo

HP does have much of a presence at CES this year, but they are at ShowStoppers and Digital Experience. One of the things that they were showing off is a “Technology Demo” of Google’s Android OS running on an ultra slim netbook style device.  HP wouldn’t say much about what’s under the hood on this marvel, other than a SnapDragon processor running at an unknown speed and some sort of solid state memory for the limited storage it offers.

Sorry about the rough picture.

The general idea here is to provide a mobile device for people that work in the cloud. It offers instant on and quickly suspends when you close the lid, in order to ensure the best life out of the battery.

When asked if this device could possibly make it to production this year, HP simply restated that this is a technology demo only and they can’t talk about possible future products or roadmaps.

I have to admit that I was very impressed by this unit. I wasn’t too sure about the Android laptop rumors that have floated around in the past, but after seeing HPs technology demo, I’m sold and looking forward to the possibilities that this will bring with it.

Google Makes the Nexus Official

In case anyone missed the big news of the day yesterday; Google made the Nexus One phone official. The community collectively laughed off Google’s claim to call the phone part of a new category entitled “Super-Phone”.

So what makes the new Nexus One so special? Well, from what I say and heard, not a heck of a lot.  It’s another Android based handset. This one built by HTC and will be carried on the T-Mobile network or available unlocked directly from Google for use on any network. Perhaps the best features are the new voice dictation on any field on the device. The demo was short, but it appeared to work fairly nicely. Of course, this isn’t an unheard of feature. Dragon has been doing this on the iPhone for a couple months now. The other cool new feature is the noise cancellation. The Nexus One has two microphones – one on the bottom and the other on the back. When you’re talking, the microphone on the back will actively listen for sounds to cancel out.  Cool, but certainly it’s not “Super” phone material.

Many have jumped at buying the unlocked version directly from Google and are seeing overnight shipping. So there should be a lot more details and thoughts floating around over the next couple days.

Are you planning on spending the big bucks for one? For me, I’m going to hang onto my $550 bucks until I see a little more reason to get this device. Let us know your thoughts on the Nexus One or NO for short.

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