Author: Greg Kumparak

Market research firm IDC has just released their quarterly report on the top selling smartphones (or “converged mobile devices”, as they call them) in the US for the fourth quarter of 2009. RIM and Apple dominate the list in an almost absurd manner, but a few welcome surprises managed to sneak their way in.

Want to test your mobile expertise? Make a mental list of what you’d wager were the best selling phones at the end of 2009, and then click through to see how many you got right.

Top 10 Best Selling Phones of Q4 2009:

1. RIM – BlackBerry Curve
2. Apple – iPhone 3G S
3. Motorola – DROID
4. Apple – iPhone 3G
5. RIM – BlackBerry Pearl
6. RIM – BlackBerry Bold
7. RIM – BlackBerry Storm
8. Palm – Pre
9. RIM – BlackBerry Tour
10. T-Mobile – myTouch 3G

RIM absolutely dominates the list, snatching up more than half of the slots for themselves. Apple follows close behind on two counts: they’ve got the second best selling handset, and they’re the only other manufacturer with more than one handset in the top 10. The Motorola Droid continues to pave the way for Android in the mainstream, securing a higher spot on the list (#3) than any other Android handset has in the past.

It’s important to note that this list only represents vendor sales, and not consumer sales. In other words: if a third party vendor ordered 500,000 units but only actually managed to sell 400,000 to end-users, it’s still counted as 500,000 sales. It’s an inevitable weakness of studies like this, considering how secretive carriers tend to be with their handset numbers.

If you’ve been camping outside of your local T-Mobile store ever since word first got out that they’d be replacing busted trackballs on a handful of BlackBerry models, you should probably run to the store and grab some more supplies. Looks like things have been pushed back a few days.

According to TmoNews, the trackball replacement program has been pushed back to February 24th, 9 days after it was originally expected to launch.

Why the delay? According to details from T-Mobile’s intranet, RIM has decided to replace the tweezers in the ball replacement kit with a specialized tool they call a “spudger”. Wikipedia defines a spudger as a “wiring [tool] used for poking or adjusting small wires or components, generally in the electronics or telecommunications industries”, while I define it as “an awesome name for the totally killer rock band I’ll eventually create”.

When it comes to bar-shaped smartphones, it takes a good amount of effort to design something visually appealing. There’s really only so much you can do with a flat slab – and whatever can be done likely already has.

With that said, there’s just something about this handset, the Qisda QCM-330. I’m not sure what that “something” is, but I like it.

The QCM-330 has emerged as one of the winners of an iF mobile design contest, though the awards won’t be passed out officially until CeBit in March. Congratulations and all that to the design team for snatchin’ up a trophy, but we’re far more interested in the handset itself.

Check out the beast of a display on the front; not only does it measure in at a massive 4 inches, but they’ve also purportedly managed to crank the resolution on that thing all the way up to 1280×1024 (though, with a widescreen like that, it’s more likely to be running at 1280×720). That’s a considerably higher resolution than we’ve ever seen on a smartphone, as far as I know. The recognizable home key on the bottom right gives us high hopes that this thing is rocking Android, though they’ve yet to confirm as much.

What has been confirmed, however, is the WiFi, HSDPA, 3 megapixel camera, and accelerometer packed inside. The only thing we don’t like about this handset? There’s no indication thus far that it’ll be heading stateside.

If you’re a Russian reader, the guys over at MobileReview have the scoop on a handful of other (considerably less exciting) design contest – but if you’re English-only, Unwired View has a pretty exhaustive write-up in your tongue.

HTC’s no stranger to stuffing ridiculous mechanisms into smartphones. I mean, have you seen the HTC Tilt — or better yet, the HTC Universal?

Looks like they’re at it again, if this just unearthed patent is any indication.

The graphic above may be a bit confusing, so here’s how it works: Imagine a clamshell phone, like the LG enV. Instead of opening the handset by pulling the hinged halves apart, however, you slide the top layer down a few millimeters, and bam! It springs open. When you slide the top half down, you’re breaking the connection between two magnets (one in each half of the phone) that held it closed, allowing the spring-loaded hinge to do its thing.

If you’ve ever owned a Sidekick, you know how oddly addicting the act of opening/closing a spring-loaded handset can be when you’ve got idle hands. The patent, as dug up by the guys over at WMPoweruser, can be found here.

Two things.

First of all: No, the image has absolutely nothing to do with the post. It was between “Stock photo of a bunch of survey check boxes” and this picture of a cat with a human smile – which would you have chosen?

Second: Please take this reader survey. We’re working on some awesome new stuff moving forward, and knowing a bit more about our readers would really help make it happen. It’ll only take a moment, and I’d really appreciate it.

When Nexus One owners were suddenly blessed with multi-touch support on their handsets, we saw the same comment posted just about everywhere we looked: “Great! Now when will the Droid get it?”

The answer, it seems, is today.

Just a few hours ago, reports started coming in that an update for Google Maps had just found its way to the Droid Market. It bumps the version number up to 3.4, which just so happens to be the same version that got sent out to Nexus Ones – and sure enough, pinch-to-zoom multitouch gestures are in place.

Alas, Maps stands alone when it comes to new-found multitouch support. At the moment, the multi-touch enabled Browser and Gallery apps now found on the Nexus One have yet to make their way down the pipes.

[Via Android Central]

I’ll admit it: When the oh-so-damned-clever coding community managed to get an SNES emulator running on the N900 at fullspeed with features like TV-out, I got all kinds of excited. Hell, even Nokia was excited about it until they got smacked by the Mighty Hand of the Law for showing it.

Well, it just got even better.

Some nerds (and we mean that in the most positive of ways) have managed to get a PS3 Sixaxis controller to pair with the N900, and they’ve modified the SNES emulator to play friendly with it. Best of all, they were nice enough to write up a set of instructions and share it with everyone. It is by no means for the faint of heart — there’s a good bit of manual hackery to be done, at this point — but if you’re ready to dive in, you can find the instructions here.

[Via Giz]

If you’re using the backup encryption method introduced in iPhone OS 3.0 and your password is something like “cat”, “sex”, or “tetherball”, you should probably change it to something a bit more complicated. There be hackers wantin’ your goods!

Password recovery software company ElcomSoft has just released an iPhone backup cracking tool called iPhone Password Breaker.

Now, now – don’t panic. Unlike yesterday’s exploit, this isn’t some new security hole to worry about. In fact, it’s a tale as old as hacking itself: good ol’ fashion bruteforce.

The iPhone Password Breaker application is dictionary-based, meaning it gains access by cycling through a massive dictionary of words and common passwords (like the aforementioned “cat”, “sex”, and “tetherball”) and their variations (such as “c4t”, “s3x”, and “t3th3rb4ll”) until it finds the right one.

As I mentioned, this method is by no means anything new – dictionary attacks are the oldest and most rudimentary form of hacking. Ever try to guess your friends password by typing in random things you’d associate with them? That’s a dictionary attack – just with a much smaller dictionary.

However, this is the first time to our knowledge that someone has built a dictionary application specifically targeting the iPhone’s backup manifest file. As long as you play it safe (use good passwords, keep your backups secure), you should be fine – just know that such tools exist now.

If you’d captured all the drool we’ve drooled over the X10 since it first got detailed so many months ago, you’d have a pool deep enough to swim in. A very nasty pool that you shouldn’t actually swim in, but a pool nonetheless.

Today, UK wireless carrier Vodafone has announced that they’ll soon be carrying the Sony Ericsson’s first Android phone on their shelves. Whats more, they were nice enough to narrow the known launch window down from the previously set 3-month span of “Second quarter” down to just 1 month.

Though no pricing details have been made available yet, we can expect the X10 to make its UK debut come April. It’s quite possible that it’ll be available on other UK carriers, as well; Vodafone almost always toots their own horn when they get an exclusive, and they’ve made no mention of such things so far. Update: Yep! T-Mobile UK has now confirmed that they’re also launching the X10, and it’s essentially confirmed for O2 thanks to a slip-up in mid-January.

When the HTC Trophy made its first appearance on that leaked 2010 roadmap back in early December, we said that it looked like a T-Mobile HTC Dash with a touchscreen.

Now that we’ve got a clearer picture and a bunch more specs on it, however, it looks more like a… well, a T-Mobile HTC Dash with a touchscreen.

I’m not sure if HTC’s even trying to keep this one a secret, considering just how leaky these pipes seem to be. We know just about everything there is to know about the handset at this point, and it’s not even scheduled to launch until May.

What we know about the specs:

• Dimensions: 119 x 58.36 x 11mm
• Built for use with T-Mobile 3G
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• 3.0″ VGA (640×480) capacitive touchscreen
• 5 megapixel autofocus
• 512 MB flash, 256 MB RAM
• microSD
• 802.11b/g WiFi
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• GPS/AGPS
• 1400mAh battery
• Accelerometer
• 3.5mm jack, FM Radio
• TouchFlo 3D Interface
• Business card scanner

The specs and form factor aren’t too mindbogglingly exciting, so I don’t expect that this device will pull over too many folks who aren’t already fans of (or are required for work purposes to use) WinMo 6.5. That’s okay though – considering that it packs “Business card scanner” as a feature, it sounds like this one is aimed squarely at the enterprise crowd anyway.

Update: Looks like the shot above is a fan-made (though still awesome) render.

[Via PhoneArena]

Two new TV spots for the Pre Plus have just made their way out, and it looks like Verizon has taken a decidedly.. different approach to marketing Palm’s handset than they did with the Motorola Droid.

Lets compare, shall we?

Exhibit A – Droid commercial:

Stealth planes! Missiles! Dudes with beards, explosions, and guys on horses – oh my!

Exhibit B – Palm Pre Plus commercial:

Chocolate nougat, bad haircuts, and pictures of babies.

We’re not saying that Verizon’s approach to selling the Pre Plus is wrong – moms need cell phones too, and no one has ever really reached out to them to try and sell them a smartphone – but identifying webOS as a phone that moms would like seems like a risky move if VZW hopes to push any of these things to teens. Do you remember anything you wanted as a teen because your mom thought it was cool? Neither do we.

There’s one more ooey-gooey lovey-dovey video over at PreCentral.

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Step-by-step, Motorola’s next Android phone for Verizon, the Devour, is inching itself onto the shelves. First came the rumors, then came the spy shots, and now..

This. Unearthed by the dudes over at AndroidCentral, it was initially reported to be the world’s first look at the Devour retail box – but something just didn’t seem right with that. It was too big (compared to the minimalist, slim packaging of the Droid), and too.. advertise-y.

Its much more likely that what we’re looking at isn’t the retail box, but the box for a pre-release demo unit shipped out to Verizon store managers as a sneak peak. There may very well be a Droid Devour tucked within that cardboard cage, but the box probably won’t look anything like that if you pick one up for yourself.

With demo units being shipped and the handset already sittin’ comfortable in Verizon’s inventory system, we can’t be more than a few weeks from launch.

[Via Phandroid]

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Fun Fact: if you were to run a Google Image Search for “bada” at the time I published this post, you wouldn’t find a single image relevant to Samsung’s up and coming bada operating system until the third page, otherwise known as “that page that no one goes to because they gave up hope of finding the image they wanted after page 2.”

Maybe that’ll change once Samsung shows off a smartphone running the operating system – which, if this statement from ol’ Sammie themselves is any indication, might be as soon as two weeks from now.

In a post on the bada blog from earlier today, Samsung (very briefly) sheds some light on some of the User Experience features of the OS. What we care about, however, is the like that wraps it all up:

The distinctive UX features of bada let the developers to deliver the user convenience which could be experienced in applications showcased with the new bada smartphone at MWC this month.

Unless we’re dealing with a bit of mistranslation here (which, of course, is entirely possible) it sounds like Samsung just disclosed that they’ll be showing the world’s first bada-powered phone at Mobile World Congress — which, for the uninitiated, goes down in just 2 weeks time. We’ll be in Barcelona bringing back all the news from Mobile World Congress as it happens – so if bada makes an appearance, expect to see it here.

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HTC’s been pretty good about celebrating the open-source spirit of Android. Whenever they release a new Android device, the source code for whatever goods they added on top of the stock firmware comes pouring in before too long.

It took just a bit over two months, but HTC has just released the code bundle for the Verizon Droid Eris. “Great! What does that mean for me?” you wonder.

If you aren’t a developer, not a whole lot – at least not directly. In the long run, however, it’s good for everyone. These source code packages give people that are far more hardcore than yours truly a deep view of everything that makes Android tick, which can lead to everything from the discovery and destruction of nasty bugs to HTC’s much-loved Sense user interface getting ported to devices that wouldn’t otherwise have it.

If you’re the tinkering type, you can find the source for the Droid Eris (and a bunch of other HTC devices) over at HTC’s Developer Center.

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Cut to the Fox green room, as Peter Klein, CFO of Microsoft, prepares for an interview with Fox Business News

Flack: Okay Peter. You can talk about pretty much whatever you want during this interview. Windows 7, Bing, whatever. Just don’t talk about Windows Mobile 7.

Peter: Why not?

Flack: We’re just not talking about it yet. We want to make a big splash and surprise everyone at Mobile World Congress next month.

Peter: Doesn’t everyone already sort of know?

Flack: Yeah, but still. We’ve successfully avoided saying the words “Windows Mobile 7″ for a long while now. Just don’t say anything.

Peter: Fine.

Five minutes later..

Peter: So uh, yeah. That thing I was supposed to talk about.. that wasn’t Windows Mobile 7, was it?

And here we have it, folks; if there were any doubts left as to what Microsoft would be announcing at next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, let them be cast away. Microsoft CFO Peter Klein just said it himself:

We are heads down working on Windows Mobile 7 and we will have much more to say about that at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

Cut to around 4 minutes in to hear it yourself.

[via WMPoweruser]

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When the Toshiba TG01 launched way back in July of last year, it seemed like an absolute beast of a handset – and you know what? It still does. Packing a 1Ghz processor into an ultra-slim handset behind a big ol’ 4.1″ touchscreen, the TG01 is still right on the cutting edge if we’re only counting the hardware specs.

Leaked roadmaps made us expect the sequel, the TG02, would launch sometime at the end of last year – but that obviously hasn’t happened. Just when we thought the project might have vamoosed, handset numero dos cruises on through the FCC.

Alas, this doesn’t do much to clarify a launch date, nor does it necessarily mean it’s launching in the US. But at least we know the TG02 isn’t dead in the water, right?

Speaking of water, the purported specs pinpoint this thing as being waterproof. And speaking of specs..

Known TG02 specs, as of the last leaks:

• 4.1″ WVGA touchscreen
• 1GHz Snapdragon processor
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• 3.2 megapixel camera
• HSDPA
• Integrated GPS
• IPX4 water resistant
• 9.9mm thickness

[FCC Via Engadget]

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Take the T-Mobile myTouch, and strap on a physical QWERTY keyboard. Give it a light tap with an ugly stick, and then convert the trackball into an optical trackpad. What do you get? The myTouch Slide.

Once a figment of our imaginations (and hopes and dreams), the myTouch Slide has been popping up endlessly around the rumor watercooler as of late – and here it is in all of it’s plasticky flesh, according to the gents over at DroidDeveloper.

Alas, the rumored specs aren’t all that impressive – they’re pretty close to what the original (and now rather aged) myTouch has been packing since it launched a few months shy of a year ago. The screen is pushing pixels at a pretty mediocre resolution of 320×480, and the processor is seemingly clocked at the same speed. On the upside: Its got QWERTY! and a 3.5mm headset jack! and it’s presumably running Android 2.0 or later!

[DroidDevelopers via TmoNews]

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Everyone loves the feeling of a brand new BlackBerry trackball; you slide your finger across it, and it rolls in place like a hamster in a ball on top of a sea of butter. A few weeks later — primarily on the older devices — it starts to get a bit chunky; within months, it feels like the inside of your BlackBerry is filled with sand.

If it feels like there’s a little angry man inside your BlackBerry pushing the opposite way whenever you try to use the trackball, T-Mobile wants to help. Beginning February 15th, they’ll be replacing the trackballs on any BlackBerry 8100, 8120, or 8320 handsets, free of charge. That still leaves owners of the 8820 and a few other handsets out in the cold – but considering that nearly all T-Mobile BlackBerry handsets are packing optical trackpads at this point, I doubt there will be too many angry folks picketing their long T-Mo spots.

[Source: TmoNews]

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Remember the BlackBerry Magnum? That half touchscreen, half physical keyboard handset that supposedly got nixed in lieu of something better? Good news!

Well, sort of good news. Neither this handset or its potential replacement have gotten any more official, nor do we have any idea where this project has gone, but the guys at CellularGuru who released those stills a few weeks back have followed up with video. The only catch? The device doesn’t actually.. you know, work. You don’t get much out of seeing it in motion that you wouldn’t get out of seeing it in stills – but isn’t it just nice to look at?

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Another year, another iPhone OS upgrade to get excited about. They’re not saying much about it just yet, but Apple has just announced that the new iPhone SDK (complete with support for the just announced iPad tablet) will be available today.

As partially predicted by the rumor mill, iPhone applications will run on the iPad. They won’t, however, run in little floating windows, as early faked leaks assumed. Instead, they will run in “blackboxed” mode at their standard resolution, or in a simulated fullscreen mode by doubling the pixels. Everything developers (and users) have come to know and love from the iPhone — from multi-touch gestures to accelerometer support — are fully supported in the iPad.

Developers (or anyone just dying to play with the included iPad simulator) can look for it in the usual spot (http://developer.apple.com/).

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