Angry Birds dev Rovio rolling out in-app payment platform with carrier integration
We're sure Finnish software shop Rovio is looking for every way imaginable to capitalize on the immense success of the Angry Birds franchise, and part of that will apparently involve in-app purchases, presumably to buy and download additional content on the fly -- but it sounds like they won't be using any third-party frameworks to do that. Instead, the company's putting together its own micropayment framework and partnering up with carriers to cut them in on the profit, turning first to Finnish network Elisa with new content for Angry Birds' Android build in early 2011.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, Other Tags: angry, app-ecosystem, developers, ecosystem, elisa, immense, mobile, party, platform, prospect, rovio
Google’s big week: Nexus S, Honeycomb tablets, Chrome OS laptops, and eBooks to boot
We gotta hand it to Google : if its goal was to own the technology news cycle for 48 hours, mission accomplished. The Mountain View-based company spent the first two days this week laying out pretty much every big announcement it possibly could: a new flagship phone coming next week (the Nexus S ), a new Android build ( 2.3 Gingerbread ), a preview of the next Android build ( Honeycomb ) on a never-before-seen Motorola tablet , the debut of its cloud-based laptop platform ( Chrome OS ) with hardware, and a giant plunge into the growing e-book market -- and that isn't everything.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: 3.0, chrome-os, chromeos, ebooks, googleebooks, nexus, platform, plunge, video
RIM’s Mike Lazaridis: QNX coming to BlackBerry phones when dual-core processors are ready
Unfortunately, the crazy rumors that Google's Nexus S would ship with a dual-core Orion processor didn't pan out, which means we're still waiting for a smartphone to ship with honest-to-goodness multicore silicon of any sort; it's still unclear just how soon we're going to see that wild dream come to fruition, but RIM's Mike Lazaridis is talking like he wants to take the lead in making it happen. At D:Dive Into Mobile this evening , Waterloo's outspoken co-CEO went on record that they'll be taking the PlayBook's QNX platform to smartphones just "as soon as [he has] dual core baseband CPUs," though power consumption remains a limiting factor
Categories: BlackBerry, Mobile Phone Tags: consumption, diveintomobile, evening, factor, lazaridis, phones, platform, until-the-dual
Sony Ericsson’s Anzu / X12 to be Xperia Gingerbread flagship? (Update: more pics!)
We're not sure what Sony Ericsson's gotten to lately with its mythological codenames, but if Xperia X10 Blog's source is to be trusted, what we're looking at here is supposedly an upcoming handset codenamed "Anzu" (a lesser god of Akkadian mythology), or simply the X12 according to the often reliable Eldar Murtazin . Details are thin right now, but the leakster claims that said device is "very, very slim" yet packing a 4.3-inch display and HDMI output -- sounds very much like the Droid X , if you ask us. Although this particular photo shows an Android 2.1 build on the phone, rumor has it that it'll be shipped with Gingerbread (which is now pretty much officially 2.3) in Q1 next year.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, Other Tags: anzu, cellphone, codenames, eldar murtazin, least-the-same, mythology, platform, smartphone, sony, xperia, xperia x12
HTC HD2 runs Windows Phone 7, makes us yearn for more (video)
HTC HD2 owners have been trying to shoehorn Windows Phone 7 onto their hapless devices practically since day one , but it looks like a port won't make it into the wild before the platform's formal US launch. That doesn't mean you should give up hope, however, because one variant seems to be at least partway done, winding its merry way from boot through the splash screen and deep into the speedy UI in a far more convincing video demo than the last one that hit our inbox . Though no apps are actually demonstrated nor so much as a basic phone call (pretty please?), multitouch pinch-to-zoom appears to work just fine, and we've little doubt any remaining quirks will be worked out in due time -- if not nearly as soon as new HTC HD7 owners migrating from the HD2 might have liked.
Categories: htc, Mobile Phone Tags: hacks, htc, mod, nearly-as-soon, platform, ported, pretty-please, splash, video
Nexus Two does (or doesn’t) exist, is (or isn’t) being released this year
After going most of the year with very little noise on the Nexus One's successor -- a phone Google has never committed to making, by the way -- we've gotten a handful of conflicting rumors about this thing in the past few days. Let's take a swipe at the buzz that's circulating this week: British publication City A.M. says the Nexus Two is a Carphone Warehouse exclusive , will be released in time for the holidays, and probably won't be made by Samsung.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, nexus one Tags: british, business, eric, move-the-phone, phone, platform, result, rumor, samsung, showcase, sunset, warehouse
Nokia’s Savander: ‘the Symbian Foundation will exist as an open source movement and we will use it’
The veracity of The Register 's information regarding the Symbian Foundation's future remains to be seen -- but for what it's worth, Nokia's outspoken vice president of markets, Niklas Savander, seems to have some pretty strong language about the platform's future in a recent interview with CNET Asia . Here's the money quote in response to a question about whether Espoo will pull the Foundation's operations back in-house after having spun them off as an open-source operation in 2008: "I don't see any reason for that
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: benefit, entry, interesting, money, nokia, platform, president, result, roadmap, stephen-elop, symbian, tidbit
N900 can run unmodified webOS games, what can your Linux-based phone do?
Ah, standards. Palm and Nokia know what we're talking about, which is why they support similar methods of developing native Linux apps, namely SDL 1.2. Add on the hardware similarities between the Palm Pre and the N900 (OMAP3430, PowerVR SGX, Open GL ES 2.0 support) and you have a beautiful recipe for cross-platform gaming.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: cross, exciting-beyond, game, launch, linux, maemo, nokian900, open gl, palm, platform, platforms, POTENTIAL, speed-on-much, unmodified-web
BlackBerry PlayBook demoed in the flesh at Adobe MAX, Air-based SDK launched
RIM's PlayBook just got real -- quite literally -- at Adobe's MAX conference today. Granted, out-of-the-box Flash and Air support are being billed as a big deal for the PlayBook, but it still seems a little strange that the company showed non-functional dummies running video loops encased in Plexiglas at its developer conference just a few weeks back, only to let Adobe show the good stuff at its own event here.
Categories: BlackBerry, Mobile Phone Tags: adobe, after-the-break, berry-play, BlackBerry, integration, lazaridis, platform, playbook, sdk
Nokia ends talk of Symbian^4, adopts HTML5 in Qt framework
Things are turning upside down in Espoo today. Besides, earnings and reported job cuts of some 1,800 employees, Nokia also announced that it'll be streamlining its development strategy to unify environments for Symbian and MeeGo. Nokia's new approach calls for the adoption of Qt , and only Qt , as its application development framework from today onward
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: adoption, application, approach, environments, experience, framework, interface, nokia, platform, rich green, smart, smartphone, strategy, symbian, user