FreshPhoneNews.com

Getting your hopes up ain’t a wise thing to do when it comes to HTC Dream or Magic from Rogers Wireless. Both these gadgets won’t be receiving an official OS update past Android 1.5, according to HTC’s website (Rogers Wireless has confirmed this as well). Android 1.6 upgrades for Rogers HTC Dream or Magic haven’t been planned as it was made only for “Google”- branded devices such as the G1. It isn’t available for the above two HTC-branded handsets that run Android 1.5, being considered a stable and reliable platform delivering an outstanding user experience. Bragging about the device, calling it an open-sourced “Revolution” and then turning down the customers is just plain sad. Did we mention that rival carriers offering Google supported devices have managed to tweak it up with some software upgrades?

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Nokia has just taken S60 into the age of voice command, Voice Search to be exact. Google Voice Search will now be available to all S60 handsets, so you Symbian fans can now stop feeling left out, or hating the iPhone and BlackBerry crowd for simply ‘telling’ their handsets what to find. Add to this the fact that many S60 devices don’t have a full QWERTY keyboard, and you can see why manual input for search terms would cause you to lose your thumbs eventually. The U.S. market isn’t dominated by Symbian, but the rest of the world swears by it, meaning that Google has just struck oil with this one. The video shows how you’ll get your Symbian Google Voice Search action, enjoy.

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While we expected that Dell’s offer to make smartphones for U.S. carriers would be nicely lapped up, it turned out that no U.S. carrier was interested and China Mobile got the Dell Mini 3i. The Wall Street Journal on the other hand has come out with a news piece claiming that AT&T has put Dell to work designing an Android handset for the carrier. Specifications about the handset are not known as yet, but it’s going to have a touchscreen in place of a keypad and a tiny little camera, just like the Mini 3i. Now let’s see how soon this baby materializes.

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Alright the news is in, not officially announced, but a pretty sound source has it that Verizon Wireless will feature the Motorola Sholes or Motorola Tao as its first straight-up Android handset. What this means is that, unlike the CLIQ, the Sholes or Tao will not feature the MOTOBLUR UI. Also, sources have it that the handset will most likely be called the Motorola Droid on Verizon. This will also be the first Google Experience handset to offer built-in Adobe Flash support. Other key features include;

• 3.7″ screen
• 854×480 WVGA capacitive screen
• 5 megapixel camera
• ARM Cortex 500MHz CPU
• Facial recognition using the built-in camera (apparently you take a photo of someone and Google will pull in search results based on the image)
• Custom Motorola Interface/UI, no MOTOBLUR, no Verizon UI
• Available in black and titanium colors

There’s also talk that a keyboard-less version is slated for 2010.

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In a fresh bowl of baloney from Apple about its incredulous app approval policy. According to Cupertino, it hasn’t really rejected the Google Voice app, it is merely ‘reviewing’ it. Apple needs to review the app because it has a few ‘issues’ that need resolving, such as;

1. 1. “[Google Voice] appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail.”
2. 2. The iPhone user’s entire Contacts database is transferred to Google’s servers, and we have yet to obtain any assurances from Google that this data will only be used in appropriate ways. These factors present several new issues and questions to us that we are still pondering at this time.”

Ahaan. And I’m the queen of America. On AT&T’s side there’s a simple leave-me-alone kind of stance, according to Big Blue, they had “no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application”. Lame.

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While we went through July waiting for the launch of the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and were sadly disappointed, August brought happier tidings. The Google Apps Connector for BES is officially ‘in da house’. Free to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition users, Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server allows Google Apps to integrate with BES while eliminating the need for Exchange. Highlights include;

• Messages sent to your Gmail inbox are pushed to your BlackBerry within 60 seconds.
• Emails read/deleted on your BlackBerry are marked as read/deleted in Gmail, and vice-versa.
• Emails archived/starred on your BlackBerry are archived/starred in Gmail, and vice-versa.
• BlackBerry folders are synchronized with labels in Gmail.
• You can search for contact information of coworkers from the global address list on your BlackBerry.
• Contacts in Gmail are automatically synchronized with your BlackBerry address book.
• You can view your Google Calendar schedule with the native BlackBerry application, with one-way synchronization from Google Calendar to your BlackBerry device. Two-way calendar sync with the ability to accept, decline and schedule meetings from your BlackBerry device is not available with this release but we are working on it.
• Administrators can use the management and security tools that are part of BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Okay, the no 2-way calendar sync is a major bummer, but still this is a pretty solid solution for Enterprise users. Let’s see how it fares against Microsoft’s Exchange though.

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Good news for Google Voice users with friends or family in Canada. Google has decided to spare you the hassle of paying those very cheap call rates for your calls to Canada, just like the GrandCentral days, and now you can call you best friend to discuss the latest horror flick you saw for FREE. What are we left wishing? That this could all be done from our beloved iPhone without having to jailbreak it…hear that Apple?

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Well the mystery has been somewhat solved. Why won’t the Google-branded HTC Android phones be getting the Sense UI? Brain capacity issues; the Google branded handsets like the G1 have potato chips for internal memory. The farthest OS update the G1 could accommodate was the Cupcake, now that that’s over, G1 is about as shinny as it’s ever going to be. Oddly enough, Android smartphones straight from HTC, the ones not bearing Google branding, have plenty of internal memory to squeeze in updates. Sadder news may be that the Google branded HTC Dream will never go beyond Android 1.5. of course this is a guess, but it seems sadly likely.

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Yes we all know that Dell is planning an Android phone, yes we know it may be coming soon, but what exactly is in that phone? No idea. Till now that is. The folks at BGR have uncovered the detailed specs of the Dell Android smartphone, and here they are;

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE class 12
• Size: 68.6cc
• 103g grams weight
• Dimensions: 58 x 122 x 11.7mm
• Display: 3.5″ nHD 640×360 LCD, 18-bit, 262K colors
• OTA capable
• Microsoft Exchange support
• Google, AIM, Yahoo and MSN IM support
• 3 megapixel auto-focus, flash, 8x digital zoom camera with 30fps video shooting mode, built in photo editor
• USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• A-GPS
• On-screen QWERTY keyboard, handwriting recognition, multi touch UI
• MicroSD slot

Yay! There’s also word that the Motorola Android handset Shules or SHOLES (I’m frankly don’t care anymore) is a 13.7 mm slider and the Motorola Morrison for T-Mobile may come out late September.

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Ah the smartphone from Dell…when ever shall it come? Dell’s mythical Android smartphone has been on and off the hot gossip topic list and we’d dearly love confirmation of some kind. Even now all I have to report is a rumor that Dell’s Android phone may be announced within this month in China. The source also goes on to say that the handset will feature a full touchscreen and not be endowed with a physical keypad. As for Android itself, it’s still the suspected OS for the phone, but no word on whether Dell went HTC-style and spruced it up a bit.

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