Dear readers of the::unwired, as every year, on behalf of the::unwired team, I want to wish you a very merry Christmas! It was a pleasure to work for you by finding the latest news, testing devices, software and services and just being part of the community. I want to say thank you, dear loyal readers, for visiting the::unwired another year and making the site a great Microsoft Windows Mobile - and since this year also Google Android and Palm webOS - resource. Thanks for all your input, thoughts, feedback, tips and E-Mails! Furthermore I want to thank all contributing editors and helpers in the background for their work as well as I want to thank all supporting companies, manufactures, carriers and developers as well as advertisers for their support!

Three weeks ago, I quickviewed the public Beta of Connectify and yesterday evening, Connectify announced the public release of Connectify 1.0, a free software application for Windows 7 that turns any WiFi enabled computer into a real wireless access point. With Connectify, users can share any Internet connection: a cable modem, a cellular card or even another WiFi network with virtually any device that supports WiFi. Connectify has hit a market need: since its beta release on October 27th, Connectify has had over 97,000 downloads and - according to Connectify - 26 % of Connectify users state they upgraded to Windows 7 specifically to be able to use Connectify.

During a recent Palm earnings call last week, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein unveiled that the expected webOS 1.3.5 version is coming soon to the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi. While he denied to give us the full spot of 1.3.5 news, he confirmed that the new version will let customers download and store more applications by removing the current limitation of available memory for applications. Furthermore it was noted that 1.3.5 will feature enhanced WiFi and application performance and - much appreciated - improve battery life while at the same time it's expected to increase Pixi's speed and responsiveness. Furthermore it's expected that the new firmware will fix the nasty SMS Unicode bug.

A recently leaked HTC HD2 ROM unveiled that it is designed for T-Mobile US which seems to proof that the HTC HD2 is indeed coming to the USA, as HTC confirmed earlier. At least the boot screen shows T-Mobiles "stick together" claim which isn't used by T-Mobile in Europe but in the US only. Furthermore the ROM is also featuring an updated HTC Sense UI which now sports a new "Documents" tab as well as an updated "Music" player tab. The Documents tab seems to have direct access to Windows Mobile's "My Documents" folder and previews Microsoft Office as well as PDF files and opens a selected document with the appropriate application. Also improved is the music library page which now shows songs by artist, straight from the artist page as well as songs, straight from the album page.

According to a report by Israeli financial site "TheMaker", Telefónica O2 is expected to buy Israeli VoIP start-up JaJah for US$ 200 million. According to TheMarker, last month O2 was bidding against Cisco and Microsoft and it seems O2 got the acceptance. JaJah launched in March 2006 with a friendly, easy to use "web-activated calling" solution for any consumer with internet access. Since its launch, it's grown exponentially among early adopters and has come to be known as the leading service for international calling with more than 10 million customers globally, offering cheap phone calls to 125 countries by connecting their call directly to their landline or mobile phones through its website.

HTC has just released 4 widgets for their HTC Hero and Droid Eris Android smartphones. "Today in History" shows significant events and famous people who were born or who died on this day in history. By tapping the embedded link, it's possible to read the corresponding article on Wikipedia. "Tip Calculator" is just a handy utility which allows to adjust the tip percentage and the number of people in the group before calculating. "Dice" is a simple game which allows to shake the phone to throw the dice. Last but not least "Battery" which shows more battery information tha the Android user interface, incl. health, voltage, technology, temperature, status and battery level.

With the the previously unveiled screenshots of Google's upcoming Android 2.1/Flan operating system, it seemed Google is going to add its own weather and news application to the next Android version and as it turns out now, Google News and Weather seems to be indeed included. Google News and Weather is a stand-alone application with home screen widgets, which features weather forecasts and latest news - basically the mobile version of Google News - as known from the web. It comes with three widgets: Weather, News and Weather and News which either display the current weather, news headlines which scrolls through automatically or both

Following Microsoft's announcement and v1.0 release of the long awaited Twitter application for its Zune HD media player earlier this week, Microsoft recently released a slightly updated version which isn't censoring nasty words anymore, as the initial release did. Microsoft's Twitter application for Zune HD lets users read its own timeline, mentionings and direct messages as well searching Twitter for keywords or hash-tags and seeing the list of followers and people the user follows. Furthermore it allows to send new tweets, reply to tweets as well as sending direct messages to followers. Tweets can even include an information which song (song name and artist) the Zune HD is currently playing.

You really have to wonder how all the Google/HTC Nexus One info rose like a phoenix! Last week at the same time, nobody outside Google and/or HTC knew anything about a so called Nexus One Android smartphone which isn't just another Android smartphone but the first to sport Android 2.1/Flan and furthermore expected to be directly distributed by Google. Everything started with a couple of tweets last Friday, followed by a very quick blog response on Google's Mobile Blog. Than, if you thought you knew everything, the first blurry photos appeared on the web - "accidentally" posted on Google's very own Picasa service - and it doesn't took too long that the first videos appeared on Google's very own YouTube service as well.

No day without new Nexus One news and today it's the Global Certification Forum which followed the FCC by certifying the Nexus One Android smartphone which is indeed manufactured by HTC. The Nexus One (or HTC Bravo/HTC Passion) is confirmed to feature quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as triband UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA at 900/1700/2100 MHz (UTRA FDDVIII/FDDIV/FDDI). And it's indeed quite interesting that the so called Gphone, which is said to be directly distributed by Google - without any carrier relations, is only supporting T-Mobile US' UMTS band while AT&T's UMTS bands aren't supported at all but instead Europe's and Asia's UMTS bands are supported:

While Android 2.1 aka Flan has yet to be released to the public, some users at "Sholes" got their hands on a build which they have ported to a Motorola Droid. Engadget took the opportunity to have a look how Android 2.1/Flan - which is also expected to run on Google's own Nexus One smartphone (where this port most likely came from) - will look like and it seems Google has overhauled the Android user interface which stayed pretty unchanged since Android 1.1 was launched on the T-Mobile G1 last year. Most noticeable is the updated home screen with - as it looks - 5 pages as well as a quick-overview/switcher to the different home screen pages:

In a recent posting at its official Sony Ericsson Xperia blog, Sony Ericsson now confirmed that the company's second Windows Mobile smartphone, the Xperia X2, is delayed until early next year or more precise first week of January 2010. While it's said that the (Windows Mobile?) software works fine, Sony Ericsson faced some issues when the company started to integrate it with some of the network specific apps which needs to be fixed now. According to the blog posting, it's all minor tweaks but also includes extending the battery life and speeding up aspects of the software but Sony Ericson wants to be sure that when the Xperia X2 is shipped, this it is as good as it should be.

It's some time ago that Facebook released its first Facebook client version for Android smartphones and in the meantime, Facebook already released an update which was so far preinstalled and available to Motorola Droid users only, but even not available for the Motorola Milestone. However, Facebook now released this version 1.1.2 to the public through the Android Market and like the previous version, Facebook for Android allows you to set your status, check out your news feed and look at your friend's walls. However, users can now also browse friends' profiles and the new version provides a far better and more native photo integration including the ability to upload photos from the gallery or straight uploading taken pictures.

Following a couple of tweets about an all-hands meeting at Google, Mario Queiroz, Vice President, Product Management at Google, confirmed in a blog-posting on the Google Mobile Blog, that the folks at Google are constantly experimenting with new products and technologies and therefore often ask employees to test these products for quick feedback and suggestions for improvements in a process called "dogfooding". And indeed Queiroz confirmed, that this holiday season, Google is taking dogfooding to a new level when the company recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android.

In a Q&A session at the recent "Connect!" technology summit in London, Microsoft UK head of mobile Phil Moore admitted that with its iPhone, Apple entered the market with a fresh approach that holds sway in the consumer market still and continued that Microsoft is currently playing catch-up in the market with Apple: "We're still playing catch-up. When Apple came on to the scene a couple of years ago, it threw away the rulebook and reinvented it. We unfortunately don't have that luxury. It's true, Apple caught us all napping. It launched something that was very iconic, new and unseen with a very good user interface."

Opera Software announced yesterday, that its Opera Mobile 10 browser is now also available for Google's Android platform. Following the previous (public Beta) release for Windows Mobile, Opera Software released the final version of Opera Mobile 10 to operators and OEMs only. This direct-to-distributor version is available on Android, BREW, Windows Mobile and Symbian/S60 smartphones and includes Opera's new, cross-platform UI framework. As a part of Opera's shift to unify the look and feel of its mobile browsers, the cross-platform UI framework allows operators and OEMs to implement the same user experience quickly and cost-effectively across their entire range of handsets.

As it turned out it wasn't a hardware defect of the HTC HD2 camera at all but a software fault "only" which wasn't related to Windows Mobile at all but related to HTC's own software. When the HTC HD2 was released, it had a nasty bug where photos, taken with the smartphone's 5 megapixel camera, either got a pink spot in the center of the photo or - in worst case - photos were completely pink (see bellow). However, with HTC's latest software fix, which HTC released yesterday, it's expected that the problem is solved and as HTC describes it the "HTC HD2 (finally) delivers clear digital picture quality like never before. Living up to the name of "HD" this phone and its twin LED flash will take beautiful pictures for you to cherish your memories.".

Life is already serious enough and sometimes we oversee that from time to time we should settle back and reflect all the developments. At the end of the day, technology was invented to help us, not to make life even more complicated (even if it is sometimes the other way around). To give all of us the weekly 30 seconds off, I'm happy to announce that the::unwired teamed-up with Wolfgang Irber who will now contribute a weekly comic strip. Wolfgang, a promising artist, is a long-time reader of the::unwired and contributed a couple of thoughts in the past years. He studied geology and worked 8 years as a scientist before he moved into the telecommunication industry and worked several years as an instructor and manager at a network supplier.

The good news is that Jay Sullivan, Mozillas' Vice President of Mobile, recently confirmed that Mozilla is aiming to have a release candidate version of its first mobile browser - Firefox Mobile (previously known as Fennec, after as Pocketfox) out next week and that a final version is due to hit the market in the next few weeks. The bad news is that Firefox Mobile will initially only be available for the Nokia Maemo powered N900, not for Microsoft's Windows Mobile or Google Android smartphones, as annouced earlier. Nevertheless, Mozilla still aiming to to bring the browser to Windows phones and Android smartphones in the future, even if no date was given yet.

Back in September, Vodafone announced Vodafone 360 - a brand new set of Internet services for mobile phones and the PC - which gathers all of a customer's friends, communities, entertainment and personal favorites (like music, games, photos and video) in one place. At its heart, Vodafone 360 has a very personal address book, bringing together all of the contacts from the mobile phone, social networks and other Internet accounts. It works across a range of mobile phones, including the new exclusive Vodafone 360 LiMo phones (two tailor-made Vodafone 360 mobile handsets by Samsung, give the best customer experience of the services including the unique 3D contacts display (see the Flash demo bellow) bringing the most frequently contacted people closer to the front) and synchs automatically with the PC.

Since Monday, Verizon Wireless is rolling-out its Android 2.0.1 update for the Motorola Droid. Like the T-Mobile Cliq ROM update, the 10.2 MB Droid update is also distributed over the air (OTA) which means not all users will get the the firmware version AP:ESD56/BP:C_01.3E.01P at the same time. However, Verizon Wireless has now given further information which describes the improvements of the firmware update. As expected, Android 2.0.1 mostly features bug-fixes and improvements but no new functionalities. Most notable is the fact that an improved Android OS stability is mentioned first.

Following yesterday's leak of the HTC Bravo, ai.rs blog just received a better rendering of the Bravo, HTC's first 1 GHz Snapdragon Android smartphone. Furthermore, the HTC Bravo is expected to feature quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, dualband UMTS/HSPA at 900/2100 MHz, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi b/g aGPS and FM radio as well as a G-sensor and the Android typical digital compass. Running on Android 2.0/Eclair, the HTC Bravo sports a 3.7" WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) AMOLED touchscreen and a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash. The device is backed-up by 512 MB ROM and 320 MB RAM which can be expanded with microSD cards.

Google just released another Google Maps Mobile update for its Android operating system. With Google Maps 3.3 for Android, users can now easily find out what businesses are nearby, try several experimental Labs features and report problems with map data right from the mobile phone. What's nearby is a handy feature which shows you what businesses are nearby, for instance if you're visiting an unfamiliar place. Just long-press on the map, tap on the bubble and look for "What's nearby?" in the menu. The menu item shows a nearby business and you can click on it to see more nearby places. You can also access this feature from the My Location menu or from address search results.

Google Labs' Googles is a new search product for Android smartphones running Android 1.6 (or higher) which connects your smartphone's camera to a Google datacenters in the cloud - becoming an eye to see and search with. It sees the world like you do, but it simultaneously taps the world's info in ways that you can't. And this makes it a perfect answering machine for your visual questions. Goggles lets users search for objects using images rather than words by simply taking a picture with the phone's camera, and if Google recognizes the item, Goggles returns relevant search results. Right now Goggles identifies landmarks, works of art and products (among other things).

The Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) today announced the launch of its "Ditch The Dongle" campaign in response to a recent study conducted in Sweden. The study shows two-thirds of surveyed consumers using 3G dongles for connecting to Internet are interested in saving money by connecting through the mobile phone instead. Not only is it less costly to add a data plan to an existing mobile phone subscription but it is also more convenient. By leveraging the convenience of Bluetooth wireless technology for their mobile Internet connection consumers can avoid the costs associated with the purchase of a separate 3G modem and the restraints of the standard 12-24 month required subscription typically used in many European markets.

In addition to HTCs expected Android roadmap for the 1st half of 2010, in the global meeting in Vienna, HTC also presented its Windows Mobile Windows phone roadmap to T-Mobile.
And like the Android roadmap, it's not yet clear how much the Windows Mobile presentation reflects HTC's upcoming GSM/UMTS roadmap but again it's clear that this can't reflect HTC's North American CDMA roadmap of Windows phones. In any case, while HTC seems to assign its upcoming Android smartphones to the Design, Performance and Social categories, Windows Mobile smartphones are assigned to the Productivity category only.

Looks like someone at the Xda-Developers forum got his hands on a roadmap, which is said to be HTC's Android roadmap for the 1st half of 2010. According to the information, this roadmap was presented to T-Mobile in a global meeting in Vienna back in October 2009.
And since it was presented to T-Mobile "only", it's not yet clear how much it reflects HTC's upcoming GSM/UMTS roadmap but it's clear that it doesn't reflects HTC's North American CDMA roadmap. Quite noticeable is the fact, that HTC introduces device-categories - other than just Professional and Standard or Windows Mobile or Android but HTC's new categories are: Design, Performance, Social and Productivity.

I know, Apple OS X supports it out of the box but finally also Windows 7 somewhat supports it - being an access point - thanks to Connectify. Back in May, Engadget reported that Microsoft is going to put a "Virtual WiFi" adapter into Windows 7, a technology that would allow a single wireless network adapter to act like two. Basically it means that your W-LAN adapter can connect to WiFi around (your home or business WiFi or a HotSpot) while at the same time the same W-LAN adapter acts as an access point and allowing to share the WiFi with other W-LAN enabled devices. That said, a Notebooks can connect to a HotSpot with costs and sharing this Internet connection with others free of charge.

In a recent information, sent to its dealers, O2 Germany confirmed that the recently released Palm Pre webOS 1.3.1 ROM has a major bug which can affects SMS text messages. WebOS 1.3.1 interprets some special characters wrong which results in a change of the SMS-type where the Palm Pre switches to Unicode. However, Unicode SMS can be 70 characters only while a standard SMS is 160 characters. This means, that a text message with typed 160 characters might be send as several text messages (so called concatenated SMS) and therefore might be charged multiple times.

Following this week's earlier leak of Motorola's expected next Android smartphone - the "Sholes Tablet", Chinese website androidin.net has posted a number of pictures which show Motorola's keyboard-less Android smartphone in whole. According to androidin.net's information, the Motorola Sholes Tablet is indeed running Android 2.1 (as expected) and features a 3.7" touchscreen, FM radio and - interestingly enough - a 5 megapixel camera only. Also it's expected that the Sholes Tablet will hit China Unicom as the "XT701". Quite interesting is the homescreen clock with weather forecast integration - since it looks like a copy of HTC's Sense UI for Android and Windows Mobile:

Back in September, Motorola announced its first Android smartphone for the US, Europe and Latin America - the Motorola Dext (as it is called in Europe and Latin America) aka the Motorola Cliq (as it is called in the US). The Dext/Cliq, which is Motorola's first smartphone to feature MotoBlur, manages and integrates all kind of communications - from work E-Mail to social messaging activities - all the devices homescreen. Updates to contacts, posts, messages, photos and more are streamed together and synced from sources including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, LastFM and Yahoo and work and personal E-Mail. Featuring Android 1.5/Cupcake, the Dext/Cliq sports a slide-out hardware keyboard and supports quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as triband UMTS/HSDPA. Additionally, WiFi b/g Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and aGPS are on board as well.

Late November, Motorola launched the first Android 2.0/Eclair smartphone in the US and Europe - the Motorola Droid (in the US) aka the Motorola Milestone (in Europe). Like Motorola's first Android smartphone, the Motorola Cliq/Motorola Dext, the Motorola Droid/Motorola Milestone is a slider phone with a 4-row hardware keyboard. The European Motorola Milestone features quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, triband UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA at 850/900/2100 MHz as well as Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, WiFi b/g, aGPS, a compass, proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor. The 3.7" touchscreen supports FWVGA (480 x 854) and the autofocus camera, which sports a dual LED flash, features 5 megapixel.

Google's Google Maps Mobile has long allowed to add stars on a map to mark favorite places and a few months ago, Google has introduced the ability to star places for Google Maps for desktop browsers as well. However, so for there was no way to keep these starred places in sync. But, with yesterday's release of Google Maps Mobile 3.3 for Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, it's now possible to keep the starred/favorite places completely synchronized between smartphones and computers. Basically it allows to plan a trip or route at home and having all the favorite spots by hand during the journey. However, it also works the other way around, marking a spot during a journey to get it available back on the PC.

Yesterday, Motorola released a ROM update for the Motorola Cliq (which is available in the US from T-Mobile US only). While ROM version 1.1.31 improves the overall device performance, it's not an upgrade to Android 1.6/Donut but just a collection of bug-fixes and enhancements for the device's original Android 1.5/Cupcake build. Most notable are improvements of battery life while phone is idle or running applications as well as a new "Battery Management" feature which lets you customize battery settings, such as turning data off when phone is idle for 30 minutes.

Mobile01 seems to have a set of first live photos of Motorola's so called and code-named "Sholes Tablet", an Android smartphone following the Motorola's first Android smartphone (the Motorola Cliq/Dext) and the first available Android 2.0 smartphone (the Motorola Droid/Milestone). According to Mobile Android China, the Sholes Tablet is expected to feature UMTS/HSPA and running a TI OMAP 3430 at 550 MHz. Other expectable features are a 3.7" WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen as well as a HDMI port, 3.5 mm stereo headset jack and a 8 megapixel autofocus camera with Xenon flash.

Following the the introduction of Opera Mobile 10 Beta 1 for Windows phones, Opera Software today launched the second Beta versions of Opera Mobile 10 as well as another Beta of Opera Mini 5. In this second Beta release, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini users can enjoy popular desktop features, such as Opera Link and the Download Manager, from their mobile phones. With Opera Link, users can synchronize personal browser settings with their Opera desktop browser, as well as all their connected devices, ensuring that their bookmarks, Speed Dial and search engines are always accessible. The Download Manager gives users a better way to control and speed up downloads to mobile phones.

While we heard of a HTC device code-named "Rome" earlier, it wasn't seen so far. Now, MobiFrance received a couple of photos of HTC's upcoming smartphone. While it's yet not confirmed on which OS the so called HTC "Touch.B" will run, MobiFrance expects that the HTC Rome might be HTC's next Android smartphone (and filling the gap between the HTC Hero high-end smartphone and HTC Tattoo entry-level smartphone). Also MobiFrance hasn't received any specs yet but it's clear that the Touch.B features a flat touchscreen, a camera without flash and a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack.