“My last blog post I wrote about tips for people moving to the HTC Desire from the iPhone. I was writing with the bliss of a new & shiny gadget in my hands,” Shane writes for Shasam.net. “But this post is why after a few weeks I have found myself back using my iPhone, whilst the HTC Desire now resides in my top drawer, probably never to see the light of day as my daily handset again.”

Shane writes, “Android just isn’t there yet. Sorry fans of the OS, but it’s like the best intentions of the open source community have produced an OS that has not learnt any lessons from the failings of the dated Windows Mobile OS, and along with the snazzy HTC Sense UI have actually made a number of brand new mistakes on the way.”

1. Android OS (whilst hidden behind the beauty that is HTC Sense) is an inherently geeky, inconsistent, temperamental and beta-like OS. It fails in numerous ways
2. Possibly more importantly, I have come to believe Android is not and can not be an “iPhone Killer”, nor really even a competitor

Shane writes, “Android just isn’t there yet, and the HTC Desire (or any Android handset) is no real competition for the iPhone ecosystem. Of course it’s not all about ecosystem (you need to compete vs iTunes etc) but it’s one area I don’t see anyone really focusing on and until they do I can’t see anyone really causing Apple concern.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Millennial Media said today that mobile Connected Devices like Apple’s iPad and Sony PSP displayed more than 20 percent of the ad networks’ ad impressions in March, a trend that could have far reaching impact on mobile advertising as these devices grow more popular.

Millennial connects brand advertisers with the largest mobile media audience in the U.S., according to IDC. The company’s mobile advertising network reaches 83 percent of mobile users in the U.S. and it reported that its brand business grew by more than 750 percent last year, while the performance business grew almost 172 percent.

“As the largest independent mobile advertising platform in the U.S., we support every major operating system and device. In March, one out of every five ad impressions on our network were seen on a mobile connected device, and not a mobile phone,” said Erin (Mack) McKelvey, SVP of Marketing, Millennial Media, in the press release. “We have reported monthly device trends from our network for a year, but given the proliferation of smartphones and connected devices, we felt that it was now time to spotlight this data for industry-watchers who are trying to understand the role of devices and consumer behavior in the overall mobile market.”

[Read more →]

“Though iPhone OS 4′s real potency will come when developers seize the new tools and build multitasking apps that do crazy, crazy things, many of the OS’s inherent secrets are coming to light,” Rosa Golijan and Wilson Rothman report for Gizmodo.

“You might have spotted some of these [features] in our thorough hands-on videos, but most of nuggets below are new discoveries,” Golijan and Rothman report.

• Cellular Data On/Off
• SMS Character Count
• SMS Search
• Home Screen Backgrounds
• Camera Zoom
• Web and Wikipedia Search
• Borderless Document View
• Streamlined “New Contact” Screen
• Events, Faces and Places in the Photo Menu
• Lyrics/Podcast Data Toggle
• Spellcheck!
• Resize Photos While Sending
• New Playlists
• Art in Album View
• App-Specific Location Services
• Game Center
• Email Threading
• Long Alpha-Numeric Passcodes
• Unified Inbox
• App Folders (with Alerts)

You can view all your emails in one spot or segregate them to separate inboxes.

Full gallery here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Apple is projected to have sold 7.5 million iPhones in the first three months of 2010, and a new study suggests those users won’t be leaving anytime soon, with high retention rates due to the investments many users have made in App Store software,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.

“Analyst Maynard Um with UBS issued a new note to investors Wednesday morning, in which he noted a recent Q-Series survey that found Apple leads the smartphone industry in both mindshare and retention rate,” Marsal reports. “Among respondents, 56 percent said they believe Apple is the best smartphone manufacturer, and the implied retention rate among a sample of 310 users is 95 percent — well beyond, Um noted, anything else seen ever in the industry.”
[Read more →]

“As we approach the one-year anniversary of the launch of the iPhone 3GS, rumors are beginning to circulate about what we can expect from an iPhone 4G. One of the most-wanted, and most-speculated features for the next-generation iPhone OS is the ability to truly multitask between app,” Tony Bradley writes for PCWorld. “Past development and release cycles suggest that we can expect a new iPhone OS this summer.”

“The iPhone OS is already capable of multitasking–technically speaking,” Bradley writes. “Certain apps and functions already multitask. You can switch to email or calendar while a voice call is still connected in the background. You can listen to music from the iPod function while continuing to use other apps on the iPhone. The multitasking is there, Apple has just restricted which apps actually have access to it.”
[Read more →]

Apple today released iPhone OS 3.1.3 for iPhone and iPod touch which contians bug fixes and improvements, including the following:

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances
• Fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard

Products compatible with this software update:
• iPhone (all models)
• iPod touch (all models)

To update, select your device in iTunes and choose “Update” within the “Summary” tab.

A YouTube video and an unrelated tip have converged to spell out “iOS.”

According to our tipster, Apple will rename iPhone OS to “iOS” in order to “better reflect the diversity of devices that will run the operating system: iPhone, iPod touch, and future devices to be announced.”

A YouTube video, not from our tipster, from “artmach1″ shows “iOS” on a background that seems to closely match Apple’s special event invitation (see below) along with the text description: shaky cam grab out of some apple tablet presentation rehearsal for tomorrows brand new thing—I think any way. might have been enhanced from a pen cam or something. or hidden in a backpack or a box of equipment.

Direct link via YouTube here.

Source: MacDailyNews