Author: Greg Kumparak

While we were allowed to play with the just-announced Windows Phone 7 Series operating system behind closed doors a few hours ago, it was a strictly no-photo, no-video deal.

We just left a slightly more public showing of Windows Phone, where representatives had handsets at the ready – and this time, video was okay.

Apologies for the slightly off focus – I was literally on my tip toes, camera turned upside down, reaching over the heads of the massive group of people crowding around the two devices Microsoft thought to bring.

Bing Search and People (Contacts) Hub

Xbox Hub and Photo Hub:

We’re not allowed to say much about it, so we’ll leave it at this: I got a bit of hands-on time with Windows Phone (the official name for what was previously known as Windows Mobile 7) prior to its announcement. I’ll have a bunch more to say about it once I’ve spent some time with it in a setting that allows for video/photography – but in the mean time, read on for my notes and early impressions.

Notes:

• Windows Mobile 7 is officially known as “Windows Phone”. If you’re talking about this build in specific in relation to others, its “Windows Phone 7 Series”, but Microsoft primarily refers to it as “Windows Phone.”
• No consumer devices will be shown today, nor is it likely that any will show up this week at Mobile World Congress. The only ones floating around are pre-production, development-only handsets
• We’ll have a full list of hardware partners soon, but the names we’ve heard mentioned so far are Dell, Garmin-asus, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and HP.
• The first Windows Phone handsets will launch “in time” for the Holiday season of 2010

Impressions

• The interface is a rapid, massive departure from Windows Mobile 6.5. Really, it’s huge. There is next to no resemblance between Windows Phone and any past version of Windows Mobile
• As far as we’ve heard so far, the details we broke in January are spot-on. Much of the interface is very Zune like. As we said then, manufacturers will not be able to make massive modifications to Windows Phone. Microsoft specifically said that things like HTC’s TouchFlo will not exist on Windows Phone.
• The Zune brand will be used for music/video content, while Xbox Live will be used for Games.
• The homescreen is made up of two pages: on the left is a series of “panels” (Update: They’re called “Live Tiles”), either square or rectangular, which serve as shortcuts to your favorite applications and pull in data from them. On the right is a simple list of all the applications installed on the handset. You flip back and forth between the two pages by swiping.
• The panels on the homescreen (the shortcut icons) are dynamic, to some extent. The “Photos” panel pulls in recent photos as the icon background, for example.



• The entire thing reminds me very much of a combination between the Zune interface and the new Xbox 360 dashboard
• Panels can be dragged around and rearranged on the homescreen the same way icons are re-arranged on the iPhone: tap and hold, then drag.
• Each screen has been stripped down to its core – if it’s not necessary, it’s not onscreen. There is no Start button lingering at the top of the screen at all times; hell, there’s not even a clock/WiFi/battery bar up there until you click the space it would usually be.
• Windows Phone is very heavy on the animations, and Microsoft is proud of it. Take the calendar, for example: when you jump from a day view to month view, it zooms gracefully from one to the other. It makes the entire interface look incredibly slick, though we’re already hearing people ask if they can be turned off (and no, they can’t.)
• There is at least rudimentary Facebook integration; I spotted Facebook status updates being pulled into the contacts screen (which is called the “People” hub), and you can update your own status from the same place.
• All Windows Phone handsets must have three buttons: back, Start (Windows key), and search. As we’d heard, Microsoft is being pretty strict about the specs of Windows Phone handsets.
• The search button is context sensitive. For example: on the homescreen it launches Bing, but tapping it while on the application list screen will let you search through just your apps.
• I’m not sure if we were supposed to see this yet, but holding the search button will launch a voice searching feature. It wasn’t currently functioning
• As far as I could tell, there is currently no copy/paste functionality. We were told that “developers will hear more about that” at Microsoft’s MIX conference next month, though it was implied that it would be about why copy and paste “won’t be necessary” rather than when it was coming.
• The build we checked out was really buggy – but considering that they’ve got almost a full year to patch it up, I’m not too worried at this point.

We’re in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, where Microsoft has at long last pulled back the curtains on the next generation of Windows Mobile. Don’t go calling it “Windows Mobile 7″, though – at least not around Microsoft’s folks, who have officially changed the name of the platform to “Windows Phone”.

There are bound to be more details coming out as Microsoft’s press conference continues, but everything we’ve heard and seen so far indicates that the leap from Windows Mobile 6.5 to Windows Phone was pretty massive. The entire system has been rebuilt from the ground up, with an entirely new interface replacing the one that has gone fundamentally unchanged for ten years. If you’re interested in the finer details, we’ve got a bit more in our early hands-on impressions.

Early hardware partners announced include Dell, Garmin-Asus, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and HP. While they’re hesitant to give any specific dates, Microsoft says to expect Windows Phone handsets to hit the shelves “in time for the Holiday season of 2010″ – which, unless they’re on some sort of crazy, backwards calendar, generally means by the last week in November.

Update: Microsoft’s press released has just crossed the wires:

More information about Windows Phone 7 Series
Windows Phone 7 Series creates an unrivaled set of integrated experiences on a phone through Windows Phone hubs. Hubs bring together related content from the Web, applications and services into a single view to simplify common tasks. Windows Phone 7 Series includes six hubs built on specific themes reflecting activities that matter most to people:

* People. This hub delivers an engaging social experience by bringing together relevant content based on the person, including his or her live feeds from social networks and photos. It also provides a central place from which to post updates to Facebook and Windows Live in one step.
* Pictures. This hub makes it easy to share pictures and video to a social network in one step. Windows Phone 7 Series also brings together a user’s photos by integrating with the Web and PC, making the phone the ideal place to view a person’s entire picture and video collection.
* Games. This hub delivers the first and only official Xbox LIVE experience on a phone, including Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamer’s avatar, Achievements and gamer profile. With more than 23 million active members around the world, Xbox LIVE unlocks a world of friends, games and entertainment on Xbox 360, and now also on Windows Phone 7 Series.
* Music + Video. This hub creates an incredible media experience that brings the best of Zune, including content from a user’s PC, online music services and even a built-in FM radio into one simple place that is all about music and video. Users can turn their media experience into a social one with Zune Social on your PC and share their media recommendations with like-minded music lovers. The playback experience is rich and easy to navigate, and immerses the listener in the content.
* Marketplace. This hub allows the user to easily discover and load the phone with certified applications and games.
* Office. This hub brings the familiar experience of the world’s leading productivity software to the Windows phone. With access to Office, OneNote and SharePoint Workspace all in one place, users can easily read, edit and share documents. With the additional power of Outlook Mobile, users stay productive and up to date while on the go.

About Microsoft’s Mobile Partners
Partners from around the world have committed to include Windows Phone 7 Series phones in their portfolio plans. They include mobile operators AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, and manufacturers Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC Corp., HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm Inc.

We’ve gotta give it to Microsoft: considering that they’ve been working on Windows Mobile 7 for at least a year or two, the fact that they’ve kept its user interface completely under wraps until a few hours before it’s expected to be officially announced is ridiculously impressive.

Alas, a leak was bound to happen at some point, even if it is at the very last minute.

Some lucky showfloor roamer from LearnBeMobile was roaming the halls of Mobile World Congress at the same time Microsoft briefly lifted up the sheets covering part of their booth. It looks like a pretty massive change from the Windows Mobile we’ve come to know; expect more info during Microsoft’s Mobile World Congress press announcement in just a few hours.

[Via EngadgetMobile]

Unlike most other smartphone platforms, Windows Mobile doesn’t come with a mapping application pre-installed by default. While this may very well change with the soon-to-be-announced Windows Mobile 7, it has thus far been up to the handset manufacturer to throw in a map app if they so choose.

Later this week, messaging/location technology providers TCS will announce that Sony Ericsson has chosen their turn-by-turn application, Gokivo, to be pre-loaded onto future Sony Ericsson-made Windows Mobile devices.

The first Sony Ericsson handset to come with Gokivo out of the box will be the Aspen, which was just announced last week.

This is pretty big news for TCS; they just acquired the company behind Gokivo, Networks In Motion, back in December, and this is the first time any manufacturer has chosen to pre-install the app at the factory.

The flagship features, according to TCS:

• Local Search
• Traffic and Weather
• Location Sharing

While it’s great news for TCS, I have to wonder: with Nokia and Google’s recent moves toward making turn-by-turn navigation a standard feature on S60 and Android, how much longer will smartphone consumers be willing to cough up a subscription fee?

Oh, Mobile World Congress — how we love thee. You’re still a few days away, and already word of new handsets is trickling out.

The guys at TheUnwired just caught this billboard going up in Barcelona, showing what appears to be the world’s first Bada phone: the Samsung Wave. There’s not a whole lot to be gleaned from the ad, outside of the fact that it’s got a camera, what looks like a touchscreen display, and that it is, of course, running Bada. Samsung’s got a press announcement scheduled for this Sunday – expect to see this one make an appearance.

Be sure to tune in for all of our Mobile World Congress coverage, beginning February 15th.

[ via GSMArena]

Some folks love it. Some folks don’t. Others… take naps. However you feel about the TED conference, you’re probably going to be a little bit more jealous that you’re not there after reading this.

According to tweets coming out of the conference, Google just had an Oprah moment mid-show and gave everyone in attendance a free Nexus One. At $6,000 a pop for tickets, the majority of folks attending the conference probably aren’t exactly digging through their couch for change – but considering how many influential or otherwise powerful folks are there, it’s probably not a bad investment on Google’s part.

I’d be willing to wager that HTC would have been just fine keeping the not-so-secret secret that is the HTC Legend under wraps until Mobile World Congress next week, but, well, that just didn’t happen.

Netherlandish carrier KPN has gone ahead and put up a pre-order page, along with a handful of official looking promo shots. They were also kind enough to share some new specs, which we’ve listed below. The previously unknown details are highlighted in bold:

• Weight: 135 grams
• Memory: 512MB Flash + 256MB RAM
• Memory Card support: MicroSD, up to 32GB
• Hardware Features: Bluetooth, HSDPA, GPS, FM Radio, WiFi
• Display: 3.2 inch touchscreen
• Camera: 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and “flister” (flash? Update: Yep! According to Robbe in the comments below, “Flitser” does indeed mean flash. KPN spelled it “flister”, which explains why it didn’t translate.)
• OS: Google Android

[Source: Tweakers via EngadgetMobile]

Everybody panic! Actually, don’t.

A number of blogs are reporting on a story by OTR Global claiming that Palm has suddenly told Foxconn (the Taiwanese manufacturer building all of Palm’s handsets) to halt production of the Pre, Pre Plus, and Pixi Plus. This claim, it seems, is greatly exaggerated.

We just got off the horn with our own sources on that side of the ocean – and according to them, all is well. There is a production break throughout a few days in February, but that’s been planned for some time now. The reason for the break? Chinese new year!

Following the holiday, production on all models should resume as normal. Pixi Plus and Pre Plus units will presumably see less production than they did at the beginning of the year, as production was ramped up in preparation for the Verizon launch.

Early this morning, RIM made a pre-release version of their upcoming Twitter for BlackBerry client available to select members of the media. Our own Leena Rao isn’t too fond of it — but that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be, right?

RIM was nice enough to slip us some extra codes, so a few of our readers are going to get to try it themselves. Want to give the new client a try a full month before anyone else gets it? Read on to find out how to win a code.

We’ve only got five codes to spare, so before you enter, make sure your BlackBerry is up to snuff (any models made in the last 2 years should be.) Here are the requirements, according to RIM:

BlackBerry smartphone with at least 64-MB of built in memory (with at least 750KB available) and BlackBerry® Device Software v4.5 or higher.

All clear? In that case, winning is easy. Just drop a comment below and tell us a humorous, sad, or otherwise interesting tale of your addiction to either BlackBerry or Twitter. Do they have to be true? I’d say yes, but there’s not exactly any way for us to tell – so feel free to stretch the truth. We’ll pick our five favorites tonight at midnight.

You guys hear the one about shameless plugs? A guy walks into a bar and says, “Follow me on Twitter here.“

While we can’t be sure how well Garmin-Asus’ first Windows Mobile phone, the nuvifone M20, did in stores, it apparently did well enough to warrant a sequel. In addition to this morning’s announcement of the Android-powered nuvifone A50, Garmin has just announced that they’re also cracking away at a second WinMo phone.

Going against the grain, Garmin has decided to take a step backwards on the model number; though this one has improved specs across the board, the follow-up to the nuvifone M20 has been labeled the nuvifone M10. Confusing, right?

Names aside, here’s what we know so far:

• Display: 3.5″ Wide VGA (800×480) display
• Internal Memory: 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM
• Internal Storage: 4GB
• Operating System: Windows Mobile 6.5.3
• Battery: 1500mAh
• Camera: 5 megapixels
• Hardware features: Car charger and vehicle mount included

Like the A50, Garmin-Asus isn’t saying a peep about US availability or pricing, though they do say we can expect it to hit the shelves by the end of June in Asia and Europe.

After building their own operating system for the Garmin nuvifone G60 caused the handset to take roughly a decade (in smart phone years, that is) to come out, it’s no surprise that Garmin-Asus is steering clear of that route. They announced back in June of last year that they’d be bring Android into the mix, and this latest handset reflects that.

The handset you see up top is Garmin’s first foray into Android, which they’ve lovingly dubbed the “nuvifone A50″.

They’re not saying which version of Android comes tucked in side (though Engadget has been tipped that it’s running 1.6, which seems perfectly likely), but here’s what we do know so far:

• Screen: 3.5 inch, Half VGA (480×320) capacitive touch screen
• Internal Storage: 4GB flash
• Camera: 3 megapixels with autofocus
• Hardware Features: microSD slot, accelerometer, compass, car mount and car charger included
• Software Features: Exchange support, Garmin navigation

There’s no word yet on pricing nor US availability, but look for it in Europe sometime in the next four months.

Considering how many times I’ve written about it, it probably goes without saying that I’m a fan of Skyfire. By way of server-side magic (read: proxied data compression), it’s still the only smartphone browser that can reliably play both Flash and Silverlight content. Its only fault? It’s only available for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60.

The company has plans to expand to other platforms, and they’ve just made an acquisition to help get that done. Today, Skyfire is announcing that they’ve acquired kolbysoft, makers of the popular Steel browser for Android, for an undisclosed amount.

When we asked, Skyfire disclosed that the primary reason for this purchase was “talent” – more specifically, kolbysoft’s skill “at building on top of WebKit”. WebKit is the open-source browser rendering engine used in a huge number of popular smartphone browsers, including Safari and the default browsers on both webOS and Android. Skyfire has thus far relied on a different (and reputedly slower/more complicated) rendering engine called Gecko; with this acquisition, it’s safe to assume that the Android port of Skyfire will be WebKit-based.

As far as I can tell, kolbysoft is a one-man operation, with most of Steel’s development happening at the hands of Michael Kolb. Steel is the self-proclaimed “browser to show to your friends with the other phone”, and, according to Cyrket, one of the Top 100 most popular applications on the Android market.

So when can we expect Skyfire to hit Android? Sooner than we could before, presumably – but that’s all we know, for now. While Skyfire would say that its development was well underway, they weren’t willing to disclose just how far along the project was, nor give a tentative release date.

This is Verizon’s 3G coverage map. See those little white spots amongst the green? More specifically, the ones in California? Those are the spots where Verizon’s 3G coverage is completely absent or mostly lacking. And, well, Verizon hates them – so much, in fact, that they’ve been spending millions of dollars every day to get rid of them.

According to Verizon themselves, the company pumped roughly $485 million into their data network in California in 2009. That works out to a bit over $1.3 million each and every day. All-in-all, the company has spent $5.7 billion in California, and $55 billion nationally since they launched in June of 2000.

So where’s that money going? New cell towers, primarily, followed by capacity improvements to towers that are already in place.

Boom! Within minutes of uncovering details about the upcoming Puma Phone tucked away within a teaser page, one of our lovely readers has sent in a picture of it.

According to the tips-bringer, this shot was snatched from a video of the Puma Phone that was very briefly available on Youtube. This is obviously the rear half of the handset, showing off the big ol’ solar charging cell, what appears to be a camera, and the classic Puma logo.

And what does the other side look like, you ask? We’ll probably have to wait until Mobile World Congress for that, unless another short-lived video hits the Tubes.

[Thanks Danny!]

Update: We’ve now got a picture of it.

We’ve known since around October of last year that PUMA was working on a branded phone with Sagem (the same folks who make the Porsche-branded phones) – but outside of the fact that it was in the works, there wasn’t much else known about it.

PUMA just put up a teaser site for the phone, but it’s just that: a teaser site. Its got plenty of cute animals, but it doesn’t say much of anything about the phone – at least, not directly. Fortunately, a quick peek inside the source code unveiled a bunch of details that they likely didn’t want out just yet.

Heres the bit we pulled from the source code:

Welcome to the PUMA PHONE website. The PUMA PHONE is a connected lifestyle device with sport and lifestyle functionalities such as PUMA Icon Messaging (Puma Language), Solarmeter (Solar Cell), Photo Sharing, GPS tracker, Bike Tracker, Run Tracker, Video Chat, Pedometer, Stopwatch, Music Turntable. It is also a connected handset that embraces the PUMA Community (PUMA on Facebook, PUMA on Twitter, PUMA on YouTube, PUMA on Flickr) and gives you access to the PUMA WORLD (Football, Motorsport, golf, sailing, running latest news), to PUMA Products and to specific PUMA Applications and Games.

What we can gather from that

• It’ll be called the “PUMA PHONE”
• As the PUMA brand implies, it’ll be aimed at sporty folks with a feature-set to match.
• It has a solar cell built-in, presumably for charging the phone
• GPS
• Video Chat
• Bike/Run tracking applications
• Pedometer (Step counter)
• Built-in stopwatch
• A “Music Turntable”
• Sports news app, IM app, and various other PUMA-branded apps which “give you access to the PUMA world”

According to the teaser page’s countdown, the PUMA Phone should be launching in 6 days. What a coincidence, that’s right in the middle of Mobile World Congress!

Update: We’ve now got a picture of it.

[Thanks to ElectricPig for the heads up that the page was live]

We thought we knew just about everything there was to know about T-Mobile’s oh-so-subtle hardware upgrade to the myTouch, known around the Internets as the “myTouch 1.2″. Truth be told, there wasn’t really that much to know: they’d bumped the headset jack up to a standard 3.5mm jack (Hurray!), and upped the amount of RAM inside from 192 megabytes to 256.

Turns out, T-Mobile has one other little trick up their sleeve.

TmoNews just got their hands on the screencap above. According to the text, the myTouch 1.2 will come out of the box when it launches tomorrow pre-loaded with Swype, an awesome alternative touchscreen keyboard we saw launch at TechCrunch50 2008.

Swype is a replacement for the standard on-screen keyboard found on many touchscreen handsets. Rather than hunting-and-pecking letter by letter, you drag a trail with your finger through the letters that make up the word you’re trying to type, and Swype just figures it out. Though Swype has been available on certain Android handsets through unofficial means for a while now, this will be the first Android handset to come with it built in.

HTC cranks out Android handsets like candy corn – and we love that. The only downside to this, however, is that each new leak has us drooling before the last leak even has time to become a real product.

Our salivary glands were just warming up for the HTC Incredible and the HTC Legend, but now we’ve got the HTC Scorpion (possibly codenamed “Olympian”) to dream about. According to the very-latest of leaks, this thing might pack a scorchingly fast 1.5 Ghz processor and the as-of-yet unreleased Android v2.2.

The emphasis in that last sentence, though, should be placed on “might”. We’re by no means 100% convinced this thing exists. Someone hooked the guys over at AndroidSpin up with what is reportedly a build file from this “Scorpion” device. The catch here, is that this leak is purely text – no images, no video, and thus, nothing tough to fake.

We’ve dumped the full text of the build file below, but here’s what caught our eye:

• ro.product.board=cortex1.5ghz: Here’s the mention of the 1.5Ghz chip. Qualcomm just announced that they’d be making a 1.5Ghz Snapdragon chipset last month, and they’re not expected to hit devices for months – but if anyone had an engineering sample or two, it’d be HTC.
• ro.product.model=HTC Olympian and ro.product.name=htc_scorpion: The names believed to be the internal codename and the tentative sales name.
• wimax.interface = tiwlan0: WiMax!
• ro.build.id=FRE65C: Google names their builds after sweets, alphabetically. The Nexus One has the latest build, “Eclair”, with a build ID of “ERE27″. The next build is codenamed “Froyo”.

Find any other gems hidden below? Let us know.

# begin build properties
# autogenerated by buildinfo.sh
ro.build.id=FRE65C
ro.build.display.id=htc_scorpion-userdebug 2.2 FRE65C eng.xxxxx.20100206 test-keys
ro.build.version.incremental=26741
ro.build.version.sdk=8
ro.build.version.codename=REL
ro.build.version.release=2.2
ro.build.date=Sat Feb 6 13:42:06 CST 2010
ro.build.date.utc=1264645720
ro.build.type=userdebug
ro.build.user=u40000
ro.build.host=builder00101
ro.build.tags=test-keys
ro.product.model=HTC Olympian
ro.product.brand=generic
ro.product.name=htc_scorpion
ro.product.device=scorpion
ro.product.board=cortex1.5ghz
ro.product.cpu.abi=armeabi-va8c
ro.product.cpu.abi2=armeabi
ro.product.manufacturer=HTC
ro.product.locale.language=mdpi
ro.product.locale.region=
ro.board.platform=qsd8672
# ro.build.product is obsolete; use ro.product.device
ro.build.product=scorpion
# Do not try to parse ro.build.description or .fingerprint
ro.build.description=1.47.3.2 CL2***** test-keys
ro.build.changelist=2*****
ro.build.modelid=DF4732***
ro.build.fingerprint=generic/htc_scorpion/scorpion/scorpion:2.2/FRE65C/26741:userdebug/test-keys
keyguard.no_require_sim=1
# end build properties
#
# system.prop for scorpion
#
ro.sf.lcd_density=240
#
ro.home.ui.defualt.=0
ro.home.ui.media.scorpion.=1
ro.home.ui.sense.=0
ro.home.ui.define.=0
#
#
rild.libpath=/system/lib/libhtc_ril.so
wimax.interface = tiwlan0
# Time between scans in seconds. Keep it high to minimize battery drain.
# This only affects the case in which there are remembered access points,
# but none are in range.
# begin build properties
# autogenerated by buildinfo.sh
ro.build.id=FRE65C
ro.build.display.id=htc_scorpion-userdebug 2.2 FRE65C eng.xxxxx.20100206 test-keys
ro.build.version.incremental=26741
ro.build.version.sdk=8
ro.build.version.codename=REL
ro.build.version.release=2.2
ro.build.date=Sat Feb 6 13:42:06 CST 2010
ro.build.date.utc=1264645720
ro.build.type=userdebug
ro.build.user=u40000
ro.build.host=builder00101
ro.build.tags=test-keys
ro.product.model=HTC Olympian
ro.product.brand=generic
ro.product.name=htc_scorpion
ro.product.device=scorpion
ro.product.board=cortex1.5ghz
ro.product.cpu.abi=armeabi-va8c
ro.product.cpu.abi2=armeabi
ro.product.manufacturer=HTC
ro.product.locale.language=mdpi
ro.product.locale.region=
ro.board.platform=qsd8672
# ro.build.product is obsolete; use ro.product.device
ro.build.product=scorpion
# Do not try to parse ro.build.description or .fingerprint
ro.build.description=1.47.3.2 CL2***** test-keys
ro.build.changelist=2*****
ro.build.modelid=DF4732***
ro.build.fingerprint=generic/htc_scorpion/scorpion/scorpion:2.2/FRE65C/26741:userdebug/test-keys
keyguard.no_require_sim=1
# end build properties
#
# system.prop for scorpion
#
ro.sf.lcd_density=240
#
ro.home.ui.defualt.=0
ro.home.ui.media.scorpion.=1
ro.home.ui.sense.=0
ro.home.ui.define.=0
#
#
rild.libpath=/system/lib/libhtc_ril.so
wimax.interface = tiwlan0
# Time between scans in seconds. Keep it high to minimize battery drain.
# This only affects the case in which there are remembered access points,
# but none are in range

Man! Just this morning, we were looking at the Nokia N900 and thinking to ourselves, “Damn! If only this could run a 15 year old operating system, it would be perfect!”

And just like that, our calls were answered.

We’re not sure why you’d ever want to do this (beyond “Because I can”, of course) but now you know: if you want to run Windows 95 on the N900, you can go right ahead. You’ll need an IMG file of a Windows 95 live cd and a copy of the x86 emulator DosBox – but once you’ve acquired those through whatever means you’re using, you can just follow this guide.

Let us know how Duke Nukem runs, won’t you?

[Via DailyMobile]

As any good Android-obsessed geek should know by now, Google’s made a tradition out of alphabetically naming their firmware builds after sweets. Android 1.5 was “Cupcake”, v1.6 was “Donut”, v2.0 is “Eclair”, while the next release will be lovingly dubbed “Froyo”. “But what comes after that?!” you say from the edge of your seat.

According to Android kernel developer Brian Swetland, the next major build after “Froyo” will be known as “Gingerbread”. If nothing else, the good thing about that name: no matter what it contains, it’ll be a sweeter treat than the crap I was forced to decorate and eat as a child.

(Like the image? While I wish I could claim that little Android dude is just killer rendering on my part, I just ’shopped in one of the soon-to-be-released Android toys.)

[Via AndroidAndMe]