Android Authority

Model at the Magic launch in NZ, from ben.geek.nz

In an interesting turn of events, Vodafone New Zealand appear to have pulled the HTC Magic ‘with Google’ from their website. The omission was first spotted by blogger Ben Gracewood, who states in no uncertain terms “Vodafone NZ has completely removed the HTC Magic from sale in New Zealand. They’ve removed all mention of it from their website, and removed existing stock from store shelves.”

According to the New Zealand Herald, recent calls to Vodafone about the HTC Magic elicited a response along the lines of ‘the phone can be bought for $1099 NZD, but there are none in stock and it is not clear when it will again become available.’

The official response form Paul Brisien said that missing phone was down to a “commercial issue that Vodafone is having … We are working to resolve it”.

The phone was launched very recently at the Rendezvous Hotel last week with a number of celebrities in attendance. At the moment it is not clear as to why the Android device has been cut. Interestingly, however, Ben Gracewood also notes on his blog that Vodafone PR requested he removed some of the photos from his blog. The two issues may or may not be related, but the coincidence is uncanny. Perhaps Google are being funny about the use of their Trademark?

We’ll keep you posted.

HIGHSCREEN PP5420

Due to the open-source nature of the Android operating system, we have always expected to see smaller companies pushing through with their own products in an attempt to appeal to the price conscientious consumer. Indeed, General Mobile, Kogan and most recently Geeks’Phone have all done just that. Well, according to Unwired Views, HIGHSCREEN PP5420 by Vobis Computer will hit Russia next week.

It would seem as though this device is already available in Windows Mobile form as the Mobinova Ice; the specification sheets certainly look similar and are not bad either. You can expect a 3’’ WQVGA flat TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen along with a 3 megapixel autofocus camera with dedicated shutter control. Aside from the front facing camera, the HIGHSCREEN PP5420 will also push Bluetoth 2.0+EDR, Wi-Fi, UMTS/HSDPA and aGPS, all running on a Qualcomm MSM7201 processor chip. This is perfect for a mid-range handset available for £320 ($510) or so.

Admittedly, this device isn’t quite as nice as the Geeks’phone, but it is the kind of product that will certainly put pressure on the start-up company.

Motorola

Motorola have been quite quiet recently regarding their upcoming Android devices. Sure, we’ve heard a thing or two here and there, but nothing huge. So what are the business analysts saying about Motorola’s chances now that they’ve taken Android up as their OS of choice for their upcoming bunch of mobile phones?

The short answer is ‘success’, but not like RAZR, arguably one of the most popular phones among consumers a few years back that literally set design trends at the time. No, this time analysts believe that most of the upcoming Android devices by Motorola will be low to middle end and therefore will avoid competition with the best selling smartphones that are somewhat more top-end devices (think iPhone, Pre, and Blackberry). According to Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities, the new Android handsets from Motorola won’t set any bars in terms of hardware, but will have a great chance of putting Motorola back on the map. Michael Mahoney, senior managing director at investment manager Falcon Point Capital, made similar comments.

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After attending the HTC launch event for the Hero, CoolSmartPhone have been lucky enough to bag themselves a preview unit of the HTC Hero. Known for their reviews on primarily Window Mobile hardware, Android will be somewhat of a new experience for them. What they have done is started a video blog detailing their hands on time with the Hero from the word go, right out of the box. I think that this is quite a useful experience to view for someone that may not have yet tried Android yet but is considering getting a device that runs it.

The first video is a little over 8 minutes and is well worth a watch if you are interested in getting yourself in on the Android action. For the most part, the video is decent quality, but given that it is shot inside a car, sometimes the screen is hard to view properly. The commentary is clear, concise and avoids rambling (usually). Find the the day 1 video after the jump or visit CoolSmartPhone here to get started with day 2.

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Sense UI

Just to show you that it can be done, below is a video of the augmented Android user-interface, HTC’s Rosie/Sense, running on a plain old G1. Thanks to HDblog.it, we can see the full glory of HTC’s Sense on the G1. Although your ‘With Google’ device may not be able to automatically gain an upgrade to this new HTC user interface, it doesn’t mean that without a little hacking, it won’t.

The issue here, is that by ‘a little’, we really mean quite ‘a lot’. Not only will you be lacking a stable OS, it is unlikely you’ll find Bluetooth and WiFi working either yet. It soon becomes clear that the Hero was not designed to run on the G1, given its requirements for more memory. With that said, memory issues can be fixed, and given the open-source nature of Android and the community support behind it, we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this turning out well in the medium to long run. After all, many of the keen early adopters will have a G1, and our best guess is it is these guys that know the most about Android development out of anyone. If the G1 users can’t do it, no one can. Video after the jump . (more…)

Flash for Android

Back in March, we brought you an article detailing Bsquare’s intentions to port Adobe Flash to the Android operating system. Since then, things have been quite quiet from the Bsquare camp, and given Adobe’s recent announcements and of course the news from HTC showing the Hero running Flash, it seems like Bqaure had to make some form of announcement, regardless. Afterall, it is not clear that these Flash exploits are anything to do with them.

Naturally, they have made positive noises, stating that an Adobe Flash browser plug-in for Android running on ARM-based devices is coming soon. In all honesty, this is not much different from where we were a few months ago, and it is quite possible a knee-jerk reaction to the media attention surrounding HTC and Adobe at the moment. The following quote is taken from jkOnTheRun:

“The next version of Google’s Android operating system, “Cupcake”, should be attractive to a wider segment of developers,” said Larry Stapleton, Bsquare’s vice president of global sales. “Our Flash Platform technology browser plug-in will be valuable to OEMs building ARM-based smartbooks and to those who are developing other types of Android devices requiring a rich media experience that is fundamentally different than anything else available for users today.”