People have been getting very impatient for the the “Cupcake” build of Android, but finally it appears to be arriving.

According to Engadget T-Mobile may have started distributing Android 1.5 as an over-the-air update to G1 owners, which would bring customizable widgets, messaging enhancements, virtual keyboards, and UI tweaks (among many other goodies).

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Android 1.5 hitting T-Mobile G1’s

We blogged about the T-Mobile Sidekick LX back in January but have heard very little since then. However T-Mobile have finally made the Sidekick LX official and will go on sale in the US on May 13th for $199 on a 2 year agreement.

Unfortunately there is no word on a UK release.

The specification of the new Sidekick LX includes:

• A stunning 3.2″ 854×480 resolution Sharp F-WVGA screen
• Integrated Facebook MySpace and Twitter (finally!)
• GPS support! Live Search is now GPS-powered, too
• 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with improved video capabilities
• Microsoft Exchange support
• T-Mobile 3G/HSDPA

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T-Mobile Sidekick LX being released in the US on May 13th

HipTop3 have uncovered what looks to be a spec sheet for an upcoming Sidekick, the LX 2009. There seems to be a significant number of features to keep people happy including:

Social Networking Suite of Apps

• Facebook
• MySpace w/ video upload
• Twitter
• YouTube Mobile Access via browser

GPS Location Based Search

• Turn by Turn Navigation
• Microsoft Live Local Search and Map

Content Creation

• Blog publishing, editing, and management client
• Photobucket Upload and Management
• Video recorder and upload to MySpace/Photobucket

Hardware

• GPS for turn-by-turn directions
• 3G-capable radio
• Large (3.2 inch WVGA) screen with sharp 854×480 resolution
• Thin design
• 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and video recording
• Large QWERTY keyboard
• Expandable memory up to 8GB via MicroSD

It is also rumoured to have Outlook/Exchange support which would make it a great little business phone!

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Specification for Sidekick LX 2009 / 3G T-Mobile Sidekick

T-Mobile has topped the tables of an independent mobile broadband performance test by P3 Solutions for the second consecutive quarter.

The testing compares mobile broadband providers measuring customer experiences during peak hours in 16 cities throughout the UK. The tests include visiting the most popular websites such as the BBC, Ebay, Bebo and Google, as well as a 90-second YouTube clip, a 90-second 512Kbps streaming video as well as SMTP and IMAP based e-mail services.

T-Mobile came top in the web-browsing experience, on average 35% faster than the closest competitor, fastest for sending and receiving e-mail with attachments, and had the best upload speeds, 59% faster than the next competitor. T-Mobile were beaten to number one on download speed however, coming second with an average of 1 Mbps, with the fastest coming just shy of 1.5 Mbps.

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T-Mobile tops independent mobile broadband tests

Gizmodo have released some alleged spy photos of the 2nd generation Android smartphone from T-Mobile/HTC aka the G2.

According to Gizmodo’s source the G2 will arrive mid-May and the interface is very similar to the G1.

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HTC / T-Mobile G2 spy shots

It has only been a few days since the launch of the T-Mobile / Google G1 and hackers have already bypassed the restrictions implemented on the Android platform.

This hardly comes as a surprise as Android is open source, and hackers didn’t take too long to crack the closed iPhone system.

The hack allows the user to access the phone as a root/superuser.

The process seems relatively easy, you need to get PTerminal, a command line tool, from the Android marketplace. From there, you navigate to your system/bin folder (where the binaries are kept) and type telnetd to launch the telnet program which lets you login to the phone remotely.

Make sure your Wi-Fi is switched on then type netstat to get your IP address. From there, you just grab a computer on the same network and telnet in. You now have root access to the entire file system.

It is worth noting that this will essentially allow anyone to access the phone as a super user as the phone has no authentication. So it is advisable to shut everything down once done.

At the moment the hack has mainly been used to install applications onto the SD card which is prohibited normally. However it should be possible to use this technique to unlock the phone, allowing you to use it on any network.

It is expected Google/T-Mobile will try and fix this issue ASAP as T-Mobile cover the cost of the phone based on the user being tied into a long term contract.

Personally I think things like this could end up being one of the strong points of Android. When a system can be opened up and customised by individuals it tends to get a huge community following. Just look how many people contribute free work to things like Linux, WordPress and Joomla. Granted Android is quite different than them 3 examples but you get my point.

Via: Wired

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T-Mobile G1 Android handset jailbroken

T-Mobile has been ordered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to pull an advert which misleadingly implies that mobile broadband is of similar speed and quality to home broadband.

A leaflet for T-Mobile stated: “Emails to send, blogs to write, games to play, stuff-to buy- and everything else you love doing online…Broadband on the go for £15 a month…All the benefits of home broadband, on the move. No wires, no waiting, no worries.”

ASA ruled: “Because T-Mobile had not made clear in the ad that there were differences between home broadband services and mobile broadband services, particularly in terms of the potentially higher speeds of the former, and because we considered that that was likely to influence consumers’ decision to subscribe to the service, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”

I am quite glad this has happened, I have had several friends wanting mobile broadband for whatever reason, and most of them seem to think it will provide similar speeds to normal home broadband.

In one case I did a speed test for the mobile broadband provided by 3. I managed to receive 0.1 meg Up and Down. This is most likely due to poor reception, and would improve significantly depending where you are located, but it is clearly no where near home broadband speeds and I feel a lot of people seem to think it will be similar.

Via: Precision Marketing

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T-Mobile rapped by ASA over mobile broadband claims

Some videos and pictures of the new T-Mobile G1.

Hands on pictures from Engadget

Google Android walkthrough on the G1

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Android T-Mobile G1 Videos and Pictures

There has been quite a bit of talk recently about the release of the new G1 phone by HTC using Google’s Android.

Android is a open source smart operating system for mobile phones and is developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google.

The G1 which is the first phone to be released using Android will be available in the UK in early November and the rest of Europe 2009. The handset will be exclusive to T-Mobile (they are a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance) and will be free on price plans from £40 a month (no news on pays as you go), which will make it competitive with the iPhone on pricing, which is “free” for a £45 a month tariff from O2. You can pre-register with T-Mobile here www.t-mobile.co.uk/tmobileg1.

In the US the G1 Phone will be $179 – very cheap for a smart phone – and will be launched on October 22.

T-Mobile are touting the G1 to have a “Superior user experience” and they predict their Web ‘n’ Walk will get a 250% increase in Internet traffic.

The G1 has a touch-screen interface and a Sidekick-like keyboard, which will really set it apart from the iPhone.

With video you can swipe, frame and crop a photo to the homescreen. Street view and Google maps look great. Compass (GPS) mode moves as you move. Comes with Google Talk, Google Maps with directions and traffic view, street view with landmarks. Facebook looks good in the Webkit browser. The Music player has advanced features. The Android Market will be an app store for games and apps. It has a dedicated search button on keyboard, which competition authorities might take a good look at.

Unfortunately it does have some major downsides (for me at least!). There is no Exchange functionality (even the iPhone has this!), it can not be used as a tethered modem, and there is no 3.5mm headphone jack.

Exchange is a big one for myself as I use my phone for business and I like to synch everything, there is the opportunity for third party developers to build for this.

Engladget have confirmed that the G1 will use a proprietary ExtUSB connector, meaning you’ll need custom headphones or an adapter to plug in your own, AND the adapter wont be available immediately at launch!

I have been quite excited by Android, and I love HTC (I just hate Windows Mobile) but I think this phone may some key features missing that will stop me buying it. I am confident we will see some brilliant phones using Android, and once more 3rd party applications are available this phone could very well be more appealing.

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Google’s G1 Android Handset Released Early November

Well the HTC HTC TyTN II has finally landed on our shores and is available to buy from several online stores. Hopefully within the next few months Vodafone will release their branded version of it, the V1615 and also T Mobile as the MDA Vario III.
Cnet have recently done a review of it, and we have a summary of the general thoughts of this phone.

1. The phone has built in GPS, and picks up the satellite relatively quickly.
2. Slightly different key layout than the TyTN, Mda Vario II etc
3. It is slightly smaller than the TyTn however it is heavier than its predecessor, 190g compared to 176g. The dimensions are 112 mm (L) X 59 mm (W) X 19 mm (T) compared to the TyTn at 112.5 mm (L) X 58 mm (W) X 21.95 mm (T)
4. The large colour touch screen now tilts up allowing it to be used as a mini laptop (though I cannot see why anyone would use it like that, the old TyTn has far too smaller keyboard to use in a laptop style.
5. The Sim card slot is not situated behind the screen for easy access, which is handy if you have 2 sims, 1 for work 1 for personal use
6. The slide-out keypad is one of the best Qwerty keypads Cnet has used. Which I would expect as the TyTn had an excellent keypad ( though the keypad on the phone I use now seems to be playing up grrr)
7. The three way scroll wheel remains from the original TyTn, again I would of expected this as it was a big hit with the TyTn.
8. The camera has had the pixels increased from 2 to 3 Maga pixels. Unfortunately there is not a proper flash as with the original. The camera does perform well in light areas though.
9. TyTN II runs Windows Mobile 6 and has 128MB of ram, meaning that everything will run faster, and WM6 appears less buggy than WM5 in my opinion.
10. Windows Mobile 6 comes preinstalled with a variety of applications that let you view and edit Microsoft Office documents, chat to friends on Messenger, listen to music and receive emails instantly over push email, among other things.
11. As with the original TyTn it has a vast array of connections (something the iPhone could learn from) including HSDPA (3.5G allowing broadband speeds over your phone), GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Quad Band.
12. The battery lasted around 2 days if the feature (GPS/WiFi) were not used heavily.

Overall the conclusion was this is a fantastic phone and only the N95 can match it in terms of connectivity and functionality.
Our opinion is that this is obviously a phone aimed at the business market but with consumer appeal, and therefore it does not have the looks of things like the iPhone, however if you value functionality over form this is possibly the phone for you.

The only thing that could possibly let this phone down is WM6, I have had my MDA Vario II (TyTn) for over a year now, and WM5 was defiantly glitchy, with the phone frequently locking up and many other annoying idiosyncrasies. I have upgraded my TyTn (and voided the warranty) to WM6 and have found it much better, though I do still have the occasional problem with it, though this could be partly due to the fact I have dropped the phone dozens of times and generally not looked after it very well.

The MDA Vario III is available from T-Mobile with CoPilot

or the MDA Vario IV is now available

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HTC TyTN II – Vodafone V1615 – MDA Vario III – Features and Review