Just when we all thought we’ve seen enough regarding Samsung’s flagship set of Galaxy S smartphones, the Korean based manufacturer is holding a special event in New York to unveil some new things. First and foremost, it looks as though they will be showing off their long awaited Media Hub platform which is their centralized online store mobile store dedicated for movies and videos. Aside from that, the invitation sent out suggests that they will also be introducing their “latest Android-powered device.” It’s rather difficult to justify if it’s a smartphone or some other kind of device based on what’s said on the invitation, but the familiar “Samsung Galaxy S” words are plastered underneath – so it’s possible that it might be a smartphone. We’ll know for sure soon enough!
via Unwired View

Nexus One owners have now received the final build of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 to install on their device. Finally out of beta, the final version is officially 10.1.92.8 and can be downloaded for free from the Android Market. Or, if you already have one of the beta copies installed, you can upgrade your handset with the final build. Of course, you need to have already received your firmware upgrade to Android 2.2 before you can even think about installing Flash Player.

While Verizon has decided to split the Froyo upgrade for the Motorola DROID into two parts before the Flash Player can be downloaded, many owners of the Time Magazine 2009 Gadget of The Year have yet to receive the first part of the OTA upgrade, which is supposed to be completed by this Wednesday. As we reported,  Adobe had posted that the same date is to be the debut of Flash Player 10.1 in the Android Market for the first-gen DROID. Now it seems that this Wednesday will just be another day. A Big Red spokesman said, “The Android 2.2 (”Froyo”) upgrade continues to be rolled out in phases to DROID by Motorola users on the Verizon Wireless network. Later this summer users will be able to download Adobe Flash Player 10.1 from the Android Market.” The phrase “Later this summer…” sure seems to indicate that if owners of the first-gen DROID want to immediately start viewing embedded videos and animated ads in the browser, their best bet is to upgrade to the DROID 2 which was shipped with Android 2.2 and Flash Player 10.1 pre-installed on the phone.
source: AndroidCentral

Mobile payments with your cell phone is nothing groundbreaking. Japan has had it since 2004, and today more than 60 million Japanese wave their phones to pay at soda machines, metro entrances and at cash registers at grocery stores.

When you put Apple with its iPhone in the mix, though, things are starting to look serious for the technology to become cool in the rest of the world as well. Apple’s recent hiring of Benjamin Vigier, who has been working on the Near Field Communication (NFC) adoption since its inception in Japan in 2004, might mark the beginning of a wide-spread contactless payment solution in North America.

Mr. Vigier has worked on some of the milestone projects in the cell phone payments area, such as developing the mobile wallet program for the French carrier Bouygues Telecom, and at the flash memory company SanDisk (Visa is offering contactless payments through a special microSD card, for example). He was last heading mFoundry, the payments company that is behind PayPal Mobile, the Starbucks barcode scanning service, and mobile wallet projects for two major carriers and a bank.

Apple, on the other hand, hasn’t been sitting still and waiting for the cell phone payments revolution to find it by surprise. It has filed a bunch of patents in recent months, that cover most possibilities that an NFC chip will present the iPhone and iPod with, such as:

• “An NFC-based mobile payments service that lets consumers make payments to merchants and other consumers via a credit or debit card, directly from their bank account or using credit stored in their iTunes account.
• The ‘iPay, iBuy and iCoupons’ patents, describing a comprehensive mobile payments, mobile commerce and mobile marketing business based around an NFC-enabled iPhone.
• Products+, an NFC-based product marketing and promotions application.
• An airline ticketing and boarding pass application that describes an unmanned, automated airport ticketing and baggage counter kiosk and introduces the concept of an automated security checking process where users of the iTravel app could process themselves through the security clearance system and check themselves in at the boarding gate.
• The Grab & Go patent, designed to make it easy for customers to transfer files between devices such as the Mac, iPhone and Apple TV.
• An NFC-enabled iPod, games controller, TV and iPhone.
• An NFC-based concert, entertainment and sports venue ticketing application that includes exclusive bonus features for users of Apple’s service.”

Benjamin Vigier is the new product manager of Apple’s mobile commerce department now, so exciting times lie ahead for people who have been craving for a while to leave their keys (NFC can also serve as an access card), camera and wallet at home, and replace them with just their iPhone.

And, much like with every other feature that’s been sitting on the sidelines all along (uhmm… FaceTime?), an Apple adoption could mean exponential growth, as long as the carriers are also on the same page. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon recently signed an agreement with Barclays and Discover to work on partnership standard for contactless payments with your cell phone, fighting behemoth proprietary payment networks like those of Visa and Master Card, which are coming up with their own ideas. Visa even offers an unsightly case for the iPhone that allows for mobile payments, but obviously this is not the road that a design-obsessed Apple will be inclined to take.

All Nokia smartphones will be shipping with NFC chips starting next year, and the first NFC-enabled Android handsets are to arrive in Q4, so the timing is certainly ripe for Apple, if it doesn’t want to be left behind.
source: NFCWorld

Mark Frankel, VP of Qualcomm, has reaffirmed that the company has shipped its dual-core Snapdragon chipset to manufacturers, and the quickest of them could be bringing to market smartphones or tablets with it by Christmas, or even in Q4.

The majority of devices with the new system-on-a-chip that runs at clock speeds up to 1.5GHz, and allows for full 1080p HD video playback, however, should start flooding the retail space early next year. The 45nm QSD8672 Snapdragon has two cores – each can be utilized independently, and put to rest when not needed, thus improving battery life up to 30% compared to its single core brethren.

Qualcomm has traditionally strong ties with HTC, so whether Windows Phone 7 will try to differentiate itself from the competition with dual-core hardware, or it will be running on an Android handset, HTC will most likely be one of the first to out a phone with the new Snapdragon.
source: ComputerWorld via WMPoweruser

Bloomberg is reporting that Google and PayPal are currently trying to hammer out an agreement that will allow Android owners to use the transaction service to pay for apps purchased in the Android Market. PayPal could be a payment option for shoppers in the Market by the end of the year. Currently, payments are made using a credit card registered with Google’s Checkout service.

By giving developers an easier way to get paid, Google is hoping that it results in more applications being developed for its open source operating system. While the Android Market is now up to about 75,000 apps at last count, Apple’s App Store still owns a comfortable lead with more than 225,000 choices available. Although Google Checkout allows for a quick payment process, PayPal’s 87 million members dwarf the membership of the former, which might raise the number of app buyers.

Maribel Lopez, whose firm tracks the mobile industry, said, “It’s clear that PayPal has been making huge strides in mobile.” The head of Lopez Research continued to say, “From Google’s perspective, they just haven’t won the war on this. Why bother fighting it?” There is also the possibility that talks could break off without an agreement having been reached. Both PayPal and Google spokesmen declined to discuss the situation.
source: Bloomberg

Courtesy of a leaked firmware build for the expected Android 2.2-based Samsung tablet, a couple of more details about it receive unofficial confirmation.

First off, the Galaxy Tab will have the same Hummingbird chipset that is found in the Galaxy S, which includes the blazing PowerVR SGX540 graphics processing unit.

We are finally receiving the first confirmation on the resolution -  the 7” display will come with a 600×1024 pixels WSVGA res. It looks like an AMOLED display in the pictures, but we won’t know for sure until Samsung announces it. The tablet also functions as a phone, will have GPS, 3G and Wi-Fi b/g/n chips, as well as a 3.2MP camera plus a front-facing one for video calls.

On the software front, it should arrive with what we’ve come to expect from Samsung’s Android handsets lately – Swype text entry method, DivX playback out of the box, SRS in headset mode, as well as something called Reading Hub, which will probably be what it sounds like.

The Adobe Flash Player 10.1-enabled Froyo tablet has been spotted in internal documents for Vodaphone UK, Orange, O2, AT&T, T-Mobile US, and SK Telecom, and is expected to be unveiled at the IFA 2010 event next month.
source: SamsungHub

Google’s new Chrome to Phone extension adds a very important button to your Google Chrome browser. With this button and an Android phone running 2.2, you can send a link to your handset which will open the phone’s browser and find the story you were reading on your home PC or laptop.  If you used your desktop at home to find an address or to obtain driving directions, Google Chrome to Phone can send the info to your Android device and automatically open up your Google Maps app with all of the information you need to navigate to your destination. Even that Annoying Orange video that you have been viewing at home can be sent to your phone for viewing on your phone’s YouTube client. A phone number you have looked up on your computer at home can be sent to the phone and the dialer will open with the number already entered, ready for you to make the call.

To set up your computer and phone to use this new feature, first install the Chrome to Phone extension on your desktop or laptop from the Chrome Extensions gallery. Then head over to the Android Market with your Android 2.2 powered unit and download the Chrome to Phone app. That’s all you need to make going from the home to the road, a seamless experience.
source: Google

Although there are some handset owners who aren’t experiencing issues with their specific Samsung Galaxy S handset, there apparently seems to be a lot of people reporting about GPS issues. We’ve already reported that Samsung was mindful to hearing a lot of complaints regarding aGPS problems found on the recently launched Samsung Captivate and Vibrant. Owners complained that it would take a lengthy amount of time before the handset receives a lock on their location via aGPS. Samsung has already stated that they were in the process of looking into the issue and providing an update that will correct it. Now we’re being given some additional information regarding that fix after Samsung’s web product analyst, Carla Saavedra, promised that the fix would come some time in September. The update itself would apply to both the US and international variants of the Galaxy S, but there is no indication if they will all get it at the same time. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that it’ll land some time closer to the beginning of the month as opposed to the end – we’re sure there are some in dire need of it.
via Electronista

Capping an end to a busy week in handset releases, we cannot forget about the launch of the Dell Streak today which supplants both the HTC EVO 4G and HD2 as the handset with the largest display in the US market. The 5-inch monster can be picked up through AT&T for $300 with your signature on a 2-year agreement, however, some might stop in their tracks once they find that it’s still stuck on Android 1.6. Nonetheless, we’d imagine that its customized experience and humongous display would be more than suitable in attracting curious customers. On another note, even though AT&T’s version is still running Android 1.6, owners across the big pond can treat themselves to Android 2.1 thanks to a leaked update. If you’re sporting the Dell Streak and want to at least get into the mix with a newer build of the platform, then click on the source link which will provide directions to download and install the update.
source: MoDaCo Forums via Android Central

Sometimes you’ve got to root for the small guys, especially when they start out as a relatively small player and eventually develop to a powerhouse that’s able to muster up a following with their line of devices. For a period of time, the name HTC was hidden amongst the other names placed over their creations as they were commissioned to build devices for other manufacturers. However, the tide has changed now that we see the Taiwan based company become a prominent figure in the mobile industry thanks to their talented, ingenious, and dedicated staff.

HTC reached yet another milestone recently by making an appearance in the top ten list of the biggest cell phone makers. They’re actually ranked in eighth place thanks to the 139.1 percent increase in shipments they’ve seen versus the same time period last year. One of the major contributors to their appearance in eighth place has to be the strong sales received from their line of Android devices, and when you look at what they’ve unleashed in the past year, there is no arguing their quick ascent to prominence. However, their humble beginnings started off with a handful of Windows Mobile devices that reached a boiling point in the US when all four major carriers offered a variant of the HTC Touch Pro2.

When you look at their recent Android offerings, it perfectly showcases how Android has become such a huge part of their success – especially when they’ve created fantastic devices like the Nexus One, Legend, Desire, Droid Incredible, and the EVO 4G. Even though they are seeing some heavy competition from a variety of rivals, such as Motorola’s DROID devices and Samsung’s line of Galaxy S smartphones, there is no denying that they’ll still be able to combat them without worrying too much. Looking forward to the future, we can still expect to see strong development of Android smartphones from them, but we’ll hopefully see what they have in store with Windows Phone 7.
source: Gartner via Intomobile