Category — Phone Application

Earlier this week we reported that Motorola would be gearing up for an Android 2.1 update for the DROID. Oops! It turns out that it might not be coming that soon after all. And here we were etching notches into the wall as we counted down the days. Even after announcing that the update would be available this week on its Facebook page, Motorola won’t be dishing out the much-anticipated Android 2.1. this week as Motorola said it was a bit premature on their part (no kidding?!) but it will be coming soon. Sorry to disappoint, DROID owners! In an e-mail to PhoneScoop, Verizon said, “The Droid over-the-air software upgrade is expected to rollout soon. It will automatically be pushed to phones when ready and Verizon Wireless customers will only have to accept the free download for continued use and enjoyment of this feature packed device.”

Streaming music service Spotify has launched on the iPhone and Android devices for its premium subscribers only. You can download it from Apple’s App Store here and the Android Market. Though plans to launch there are in play, the service is not yet live in the US, and it has already taken several European markets by storm. This iPhone app is basically identical to the leaked beta we reviewed in detail.
The mobile apps will allow you to play the entire Spotify catalogue and the ‘offline mode’ caches playlists so they can be played when you are offline, like on a plane. Spotify has set up a special mobile sectionwith more details. The launch of this mobile version now fires the starting gun on their US launch plans. A large number of record labels have actually invested in the Swedish-born, London-based startup, which is nowvalued at €170 million, or about $242 million, with a post money valuation of around €200 million. This is the first time Spotify has gone mobile with its service and it’s sure to cause a lot of interest. Spotify really is unlike pretty much any streaming service you’ve tried before, mainly because tracks start to play almost instantly due to the P2P technology employed. On a mobile the effect is impressive. See the video below. Though on the face of it Spotify appears to compete with iTunes,in reality, as we predicted, Apple appears to be relaxed about the service, presumably so long as the mobile app remains tied to premium subscribers.

Nearly two weeks after submitting the app to Apple, Facebook’s totally revamped 3.0 application is finally live on the App Store, according to the app’s developer Joe Hewitt . You can download it now here . The store currently shows that the app is version 2.5, but if you click the Download button anyway you’ll get the new version. The new self inking stamps application brings a slew of new features, making it what may be the most useful app on the App Store (be sure to read this post) for our full review. Among the additions are Events, which have frustratingly been omitted from previous versions. Now you’ll be able to look up where your Events are, and you can also respond to them and see which of your friends are attending (for anyone who has ever had to boot up the web version of the site just to look up an Event address, this is a big deal). You can also post video directly to the site if you have an iPhone 3GS — a feature that will likely see the number of videos on Facebook increase dramatically. Smaller changes include a News Feed that more closely reflects the feed you’ll find on the main Facebook site, as well as the ability to “Like” items your friends have created. One feature that users will be missing is Push Notifications, which we suspect will be rolled out in version 3.1, which Hewitt is already working on. There will also be support for landscape mode in the upcoming release, and we may also see support for the ability to watch Facebook videos from the phone (right now you can only upload them). It’s worth noting that the 11 day wait since Facebook originally submitted the application was enough to raise Hewitt’s ire (and justifiably so), leading him to condemn the App Store approval process and call for its removal entirely.

In the World of mobile OS, Google Android is a challenger still and plays a vital role, as the amount of devices used for the purpose of running the system are about to come out in the coming months along with the combination with its open approach.The main reason for the success of Apple’s App Store for iPhone/iPod is measured by counting the number of applications that has been developed for the platform, it is around 70,000 applications till now.But Google didn’t disclose the number of applications which are exactly available on Android Market, so it is difficult to compare the two on this particular level.But, I am very thankful to AndroLib,as it provides us a useful website from which we can browse Android applications from our PC.There are more than 10,000 applications and games available on this platform today and above all, majority of the applications are available at free of cost and to be exact atleast 64.2% of applications are for free. The company has to admit first that there are more than 10,000 applications tracked by them, but Google says that there is no way to get an idea of the exact number of applications in Android market.But,the Android market has grown upto 4.4 times in just four months.This is a great achivement for Google.

In the begining of this month a Facebook application for Android was launched, this is a much anticipated Facebook application specially designed for Android. Even though it is a official release ,as said by the company, but a news came out that this application was not released by Facebook, but Google has built this application themselves,as they thought that having a Facebook application was more important to them. In this Facebook application there is no messaging facility, just the news stream is displayed and it has a ability to post status updates and we can take/upload photos to Facebook. The cool stuffs which are available in Facebook 3.0 application for iPhone users are not yet available in Android. But,the application runs fast in Android when compared to iPhone. In iPhone many people goes to Facebook through browser as the application was too slow to use.But the application in Android is more quick as it can do three or four functions quickly without a single problem. Another wonderful feature is that,notifications of new events can be viewed upto date, as Android application has the ability to run in the background,even though you are not actively using the application you can see this stuff in the background.Below there is a video demo about this application.

Google Voice has launched a new feature,this feature allows the Google Voice users with a ability to  which are inbound,to mail and other than that reply to such messages can be sent from email as well.This feature has been a long requested feature by the users to Google Voice. Before, the users of Google Voice got the voice mails auto transcribed and email was sent to them. But, the inbound text messages are not sent to them by mail.The users can just read the messages and reply to those messages online in addition to their phones in a normal way.But there was no option of forwarding those messages to email but Google has changed the trend recently.There are third paty services who had offered this and they want you to give your Google Voice credentials to them,which is a bad idea and now Google has launced this feature for itself. Google seems to take requests of the users, and my request for Google is that,to launch an API,as I don’t want to wait and see what developers come up with, and I want to use those the third party services without giving them my Google Voice credentials in a secure manner.

Open Table was launched on iPhone in November of last year. A very first comment came from a Gentleman named “Chris” saying that “Unless Open Table comes on Android,it’s a useless application”. A very good news came for “Chris” this week that, online restaurant reservation service launched their application onto the Android market with both their web service and the  available on other platforms.We can check for and reserve tables using this Open Table Android application and we need not dial any of the numbers or contact the persons in the restaurants for reservation purpose.Just enter the date,time, and size of the party on the open table, it will provide us a list of restaurants that are applicable for you, just pick one of them and confirm and your name will get on to the list by open table.The applications in Android always takes a step further than the iPhone variant,This makes use of Android ability to tie multiple applications together.Both WHERE and GoodFood are now partners of the Android market,which allows the customers to jump immediately into Open Table and make their reservations.Moreover,this application is easy and works well ,the best and above all, it is for free.Check it out in the Android market.

There was a complain last week by Google Voice users telling that,the calls made using Google Voice service was abruptly terminated after 15 minutes.We all know that Google Voice service of Google has not come out of beta still.But I don’t think that, it is wrong to expect perfection in the service when it comes to voice calls.These problems make it difficult for the people to trust the service.More than one user, had complained about the same issue,that each and every call they make drops abruptly at 15 minutes and a few seconds.Google has said that,cause for the call drop after 15 minutes has been identified and will be call drop after 15 minutes, and they also told that,if the same problem continues,users are welcomed to give their feedback. Recently,a user of Google voice said that,he uses Google Voice for all calls he make through mobile, but he has not noticed the issue as he will hang over a call rarely for few minutes.He is a recent iPhone user,he has not noticed such a problem yet and he has ever managed to go beyond fifteen minutes on iphone and has not experienced a call drop atleast once.The only way is that,Apple should accept Google Voice application for the iPhone,this may be the right way to fix the call drop problem.

Recently,MINI has launched a free mobile application called as MINI Roadside Assistance,which may be helpful for customers and it will Assist when they are in need.This application is specially designed for iPhone  and Blackberry.MINI Roadside Assistance works by using  the GPS of our device and the vehicle’s identification number (VIN), of our vechicle which is a unique number.This helps us to get roadside assistance when we are travelling,any type of incidents like a breakdown, blow a tire or get involved in accident,eveything can be monitored through this application.Nothing more to be done by the user,just he have to launch the application first and then he have to hit the call button.It acts as a automatic accident detection system.This application not only provides roadside connection and information about vechicle location,but it also tells us some information about fuel,tires mechanical troubles,or lock-out situations and MINI’s battery status.The MINI Roadside Assistance application comes free for MINI owners,it is technically free for everyone but ,but for non owners of MINI ,it functionality is zero If u don’t have MINI,there is a similar application like MINI called as AAA Roadside which is available for iPhone .For more details about MINI Roadside Assistance,check out the website.

Google Maps,which is a online free service and it is a great product of Google,but it lacks in some parts of the world.Instead of helping people to get information about  those places,Goolge acts smart by using Map Maker,which is a service that allows people who have knowledge to edit the map of their area  themselves.The latest update of  Google Map says that,it has added some important areas to the list such as Mexico and  Eastern Europe last week.This update by Google,has doubled the number of users who can map their country on Map Maker,which is very impressive.It is even more impressive that Map Maker can now be used by all the countries in the list of Google,While the Map Maker doesn’t work in the places like U.S and other well mapped out areas of the world,things like place locations can be edited on U.S maps.It is a true fact that,only the community is responsible for a lot of data on Google Maps,which is a sort of Wiki-style now.Google looks over this new data about the country and Google adds it gradually to the actual Google Map.This is a very great idea by Google,we could get more information in our system at free of cost.But,I don’t know  still how longer Google is going to allow its users in the rest of the world to edit the roads and other features,which are not correct and not listed.But,this kind of information given by the users might be very useful on day to day basis.As an example,when we want to get to a  place in time,we are able to know which road is under construction ,so that,we can take a alternate route.Another important information is that Google has come out this week is that, the Map Maker data set in Africa would be available for non-profits and NGOs to download to further promote mapping the areas.