AndroidCentral has posted a hands-on video with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which you can view below. It looks a lot better than I expected. More details here.

With so much going on at the moment the Motorola DEFY announcement has been somewhat overlooked. It is a dust proof and water resistant phone that will be best suited to those of you who lead active lives. No good for me then…

Motorola today announced DEFY™ enhanced with MOTOBLUR™. Motorola DEFY is a slim, pocketable Android™ smartphone that comes equipped with advanced Web-browsing capabilities and a 3.7” high-resolution touch screen display that provides edge to edge views of your favorite photos, videos and websites.

Motorola DEFY is dust proof and water resistant protecting you from life’s little challenges like a sudden rain shower, spilt drink, or dropping your phone in the sand. It also features a large, resilient display that has outstanding protection against scratch damage. CrystalTalk® PLUS vanquishes noisy environments with two microphones which intelligently filter out background noise and amplify your voice so you don’t have to shout.

More at the Clove Blog.

In my review of the Motorola FLIPOUT I made the following comment at the end-

“People who want an Android phone want a big screen or at the very least something that looks semi-serious. People who want a trendy phone that is unusual and catches the eye will want to send messages, mess about on it and do little else. The FLIPOUT is a smartphone that looks like it should be on a teenage girl’s shopping list and thus it may struggle in both markets.”

Android hardware is being built that caters for every sector of the market. Power users who want to customer every aspect of the software have the Desire, Galaxy S and others. People who just want to try out Android can opt for the Pulse Mini, HTC Tattoo and a whole range of budget offerings which is growing by the day and trendy young things can go for the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini or the previously mentioned FLIPOUT.

The problem Android has, as I see it, is that it is a very busy operating system that comes with a huge number of apps installed. The manufacturers then include a selection of apps that they believe make it more functional and some even include their own layers on top which can make an Android phone feel very different to the next one. Android is quite cool because of this and offers much flexibility, but it also means that people moving up from a feature phone may find the interface and everything else far too cluttered to get to grips with.

I have reviewed a few Android smartphone so far and have not covered all of the apps on any of them so far, and dare I admit it, not understood all of them. Sometimes they feel as if they have been thrown into a phone and just left there for the user to discover on their own. I am fairly certain that if I owned an Android phone I would not use more than half of the included apps, and am just as certain that most Android users will use less than 25%. It is not a bad thing to have lots of apps built in, but when they get in the way it starts to make the entire experience feel cumbersome and unnecessarily complex.

Nokia does a similar thing with Symbian which can include too many apps and menu functions that are crazily long winded. This is the kind of setup that stops people sticking with a smartphone and Android and Symbian are two examples. The sells figures for Android suggest I am wrong, but I don wonder how many new Android users struggle with what is being sold as a consumer operating system on so many consumer designed phones.

Available from Clove. Due today for £233.83.

In part one of my FLIPOUT review I explained my thoughts on the hardware and in particular how well the form comes together to produce a unique experience that is a breath of fresh air in the smartphone world. None of that is important if the phone does not work very well so let’s find out how it performs in daily use.

General Performance

The FLIPOUT is running Android 2.1 and packing a 600Mhz processor. This processor does not sound great compared to the 1 GHz competition, but when you consider the screen size and what you are likely to use the phone for it is more than adequate. Indeed, in my tests I did not suffer any glitches at all and found it to be at least as fast as the Desire. I pushed it as far as I could by running multiple programs, but got bored before it started to slow down.

Battery

At 1170mAh the battery is not the biggest in the business, but then neither is the screen. I would, however, put the battery life as below average and you can expect one day of use as a maximum. Heavy use may mean a charge in the evening, but it ‘just’ about passes the level I would personally deem as acceptable.

Call Quality

Much better than I expected. The speakerphone was especially loud and crisp and once again I marvelled at the size of the phone and what it could produce. To the ear, which feels a little odd by the way, it was also clear, but not as loud as some other phones. Don’t get me wrong, this phone is not as clear as the BlackBerry or a Nokia, but it is pretty good and offers more than enough voice quality for most people.

Media

Music playback through headphones is above average and even better through the loudspeaker. It isn’t going to impress audio junkies, but again is of a level that most will accept. Video playback is quite good and produces yet another “How am I doing this on something so small?” moment rather than making you feel that the quality is wonderful. A screen this size and resolution will always struggle to compete in this area and to be fair it wasn’t built to.

Camera

Oh dear. It really is not good; capturing a good quality photo proved troublesome and video quality was even worse; the audio quality in the video capture was appalling and I could barely hear the words of the people I videoed. I can often say that a phone camera is useful to have, but I struggle to for this one. On the good side there is an image editor, but if you get past deleting the photos you have taken I will be impressed.

Software

Android 2.1 is impressive as always and Motorola has included Motoblur. Opinion is divided on Motoblur and I am in the camp that can take it or leave it. I tend to think positively of it because it is different from most other OS shells and appreciate the large number of extras that Motorola has included on the FLIPOUT.

As if Android does not include enough apps in its default form, there is quite a list of additions to contend with. Social networking is high on the agenda here and Happenings is one of a new breed that has been designed to brings all of your different social networks under one roof. It is a neat idea, but does not present the updates in a way that will suit those of you following lots of people on Twitter. It is more suited to Facebook and the ability to filter the app helps, but heavy users may struggle with it.

This is what you get within Motoblur-

BATTERY MANAGER
Battery Manager helps you manage your phone’s power consumption.
MESSAGING
Facebook™, MySpace and Twitter Direct Messaging
MOTOBLUR ENABLED
CALLER ID
On main display, Picture ID, Ringer ID, social network status
CUSTOMIZABLE HOME SCREEN
Widgets can be moved and resized to further personalize your seven (7) home screen panels. Enjoy access to more apps, games and widgets from Android Market™.
PHONEBOOK
Your work, personal and social networking contacts all in one place.
PHOTO SHARING
MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa™, Facebook™

On top of this there is News for RSS feeds, Google Maps Navigation which really is very impressive for a free app, Quickoffice, Places and a few other changes. Motorola has put some effort into ensuring that the FLIPOUT is as complete as can be out of the box, but again I feel that Android is already crowded enough without too many additions.

Obviously the more software the better for someone like me who has used many smartphones, but is the target market going to get close to all of the software onboard?

Screen

I quite like the screen on the FLIPOUT. It isn’t very big of course, but performed much better outdoors than I expected. The low resolution is noticeable almost all of the time and text in particular felt a little chunky, but it’s a serviceable solution that does the job. I wouldn’t expect much more for the asking price.

Conclusion

All of the above sounds as though I am relatively happy with the FLIPOUT, but that would be understating the matter. I love this little phone to bits! It is completely different to anything I have used before and for that alone it has charmed me. That is a shallow reason to like a phone I know, but if I like it this much because of the shape imagine what teenagers will think of it. And maybe this is the FLIPOUT’S biggest problem?

People who want an Android phone want a big screen or at the very least something that looks semi-serious. People who want a trendy phone that is unusual and catches the eye will want to send messages, mess about on it and do little else. The FLIPOUT is a smartphone that looks like it should be on a teenage girl’s shopping list and thus it may struggle in both markets.

Having said all of that, there is a lot to like about the FLIPOUT and for novelty value alone it is refreshing in almost every way. The fact that it is actually a very good smartphone may be lost on many people though.

XDA Developers is at it again. This time the Google Voice widget has been extracted from the leaked G2 ROM and can now be downloaded by anyone.

Clove now has stock of the HTC Desire CU S420 Car Upgrade Kit which is designed to attach to most surfaces of your cars interior, from a curvy dashboard to a smooth windshield. It’s not cheap at £56.40, but like most things you get what you pay for.

The Desire in-car mount CU S420 is designed to attach to most surfaces of your cars interior, from a curvy dashboard to a smooth windshield. Providing a secure mounting solution the CU S420 is a must have for any traveller or user who wants to easily see and control their device when in a vehicle.

HTC CC C200 Micro USB Charger
HTC Desire CU S420 Car Upgrade Mount
Magnetic Plate (with adhesive – for optional dash mounting)
Instruction manual

Motorola FLIPOUT review

Available from Clove on pre-order. Due in September for £233.83.

Throughout the past two decades there have been very few phones that change our view of what is acceptable in terms of form factor and size.

In 1994 the Sony CM-R111 was a revolution. It had no screen and merely displayed signal coverage and battery power using LEDs, but it was unbelievably tiny and showed that small mobile phones were possible. Unfortunately it took many more years to this type of phone size to become commonplace.

Motorola released the StarTAC in 1996 and it quickly became ‘the’ mobile phone to own. It was like nothing before it and to say the design was a complete revolution would be an understatement.

In 2004 Motorola debuted the RAZR and in effect produced another StarTAC moment. It was truly beautiful to look at and to use and everyone wanted one. In fact so many people wanted the RAZR that it quickly became the biggest selling mobile phone in the world and Motorola made the mistake of producing variations on this design for far too long.

As it happens I owned all of the above phones and they were all super impressive for their time. They held that magical quality of feeling too small for what they could do and years ahead of their respective times.

Here we are in 2010 and Motorola is launching the FLIPOUT. Is this another magic moment in the history of mobile phones? The difference is that it is a smartphone, not a standard mobile, and it is competing with other advanced devices like the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini that are trying to break the mould in terms of how a mobile should be formed. This is a difficult battle and at first glance it looks as though the FLIPOUT is a gimmick waiting to bomb like so many other Motorola products from the past few years. It’s not quite that easy to judge though…

First Impressions

This is a pre-production unit so I can’t judge the packaging or accessories, but presume that an AC charger, USB cable and headphones will be included. The phone itself I can judge quite easily from a hardware perspective and I have to say that I was blown away when I first picked it up.

With a footprint of 67 x 67mm it feels impossibly small and is unlike anything I have used before. The 17mm depth is noticeable and this is not a phone that will sit in your pocket without making a bulge, but the main dimensions take the smartphone to a place it has not ventured before.

I’m not a science fiction fan, but the phone gives a feeling that you are picking something up from an episode of Star Trek. It feels light years ahead of other smartphones purely because of it diminutive dimensions and square form. It doesn’t feel like a phone, but more a tiny PDA when you hold it without the keyboard exposed and is completely unique in achieving this.

I have big hands and expected to struggle with the touch screen on such a small phone, but instead found it perfectly natural to pick up and start navigating with my finger. Even in closed mode the icons are placed perfectly below the screen and after the merest of times I felt at home with this strangest looking of phones.

Swiveling out the keyboard brings more unnaturalness to the experience because it just feels really odd the first few times you do it. I can understand why it has to be this way because there would not have been enough space for the keys if it was a slider and FLIPOUT is quite a good name so I guess that Motorola wanted to stick with that. It serves no discernible purpose at all by swiveling, but for novelty alone it may help sell a few more devices. It also looks great when a call arrives and you swivel the phone to answer it and kind of reminds me of the quick flick many people perfected with the RAZR a few years back. The screen orientation stays the same when you swivel it which is not expected, but it works, and the mechanism attaching the two parts of the phone appears to be very strong.

Motorola seems to be presuming that people will use this phone in open mode most of the time because in closed mode the volume keys are at the top and the on/off button is on the right. The microUSB is at the bottom and the 3.5mm headphone jack is just above the on/off button. In open mode everything moves and becomes more traditional; on/off and headphone jack at the top, volume keys on the left and microUSB on the right.

Personally I would like to see the buttons the other way around because I believe that most will use the touch screen to check Twitter, view bookmarks and clear alarms etc. without needing the keyboard and even more importantly are likely to close the phone before using the side buttons. It’s not a big deal, but is a slight design flaw in my opinion.

There is no touch screen keyboard here which makes sense because the screen is small at 2.8″ and the hardware keyboard is only a twist away (hmmm, the Motorola TWIST? That’s an even better name). You can’t expect much from a keyboard that is only 67mm square, but what a surprise it is. There are 5 full rows of keys including a number row and after 10 minutes I felt right at home with it. I hadn’t realised how useful a dedicated number row is, and how often I type numbers, and every part of the keyboard has been a joy to use. The over large enter key is extremely useful and even the two-key wide space bar works well with a mini navigation pad in the corner for good measure. Trust me on this, it is one of the best keyboards in the industry which is amazing considering the size and shows what can be done in a small space.

Overall the hardware is way better than I expected. From the positioning of the microSD slot, just above the battery, to the screen which works ‘much’ better than I expected in bright conditions the FLIPOUT does not feel like an exercise in miniaturisation, but a full smartphone in a tiny body.

On Tuesday I will cover the software, general performance and sum up my thoughts on the FLIPOUT, but so far it is looking very positive indeed.

Android On My HD2… Three Days And Counting over at WMPowerUser puts to rest the idea that a ported OS on a smartphone cannot work properly. It seems as though the HD2 could be the perfect phone to run it on.

Just a few days ago, I wrote this article talking about what a good job HTC did with the HD2. One of the commenter’s called Bug Blatter left a note talking about how awesome Android ran on his device is. After following the link he left in the comment, I found myself running Android on my device regularly.

I am now back on the Windows Mobile side, but I will return tonight to Android just to play a little game and I will return with the comfort knowing all my settings are the same.

Jon from the Clove Blog has posted his experiences of the Motorola FLIPOUT and he seems to be quite impressed by this highly unusual smartphone.

I thought I would just share a few quick thoughts with you regarding the FLIPOUT.  Reviews are still rather scarce and can sometimes be a bit ‘fluffy’ so below are a few initial thoughts and impressions as I handled the device.

* Good size
* Ok, the purple/fuchsia colour is not for me
* Ideal phone for the female, small, light, stylish
* Slide/flip mechanism works well although haven’t quite got the finger positioning right
* Solid build
* Keyboard doesn’t feel cheap
* I like the cursor pad
* The metallic back to the screen isn’t as shiny as I thought it would be, good thing I think – slight etching in it, almost looks like it has been scratched….not too sure about this.
* I just want to keep flicking it open – got the hang of it now
* Sussed the perfect position in the pocket to pull it out, flick it and open it and answer a call

Read on for more.

I have used and reviewed many smartphone over the past year and some stand out more than others. In an industry which is racing to the bottom in terms of average price there are still some smartphones produced that aim to be the very best in their field. For this battle I considered many phones such as the Nokia N97, BlackBerry Bold 9700 and Palm Pre, but decided that the iPhone 4, Desire and Galaxy S represented the best of what the touch screen smartphone industry has to offer. They were certainly the ones that stood out to me the most over the year and so I decided to let them battle it out to see which is the very best at this time. These are purely from my experiences so are not a technical look, but hopefully this article will help if you are stuck on deciding which one to buy.

I will take each feature in turn and then look at the overall usability of each phone and eventually decide which one is the best of the bunch.

Camera

Smartphone cameras have become a battleground all of their own in the past year and it is not uncommon to see phones marketed with the camera spec at the very top of the list. Manufacturers have realised this and are putting huge amounts of research and effort into cramming in the best cameras they can. Megapixels, as you probably know, are far from the whole story these days and this is even more apparent on smartphones. You have a phone with you and being able to catch a moment is crucial to the whole reason it is there. If it requires fiddling to capture an image in good quality its use is suddenly diminished. If it struggles to get meaningful snaps in poor lighting its use is halved. And if the video recording is blighted by poor sound capture or ghosting it starts to feel like an add-on rather than a feature worth having.

iPhone 4 Camera: 9/10

There is little doubt that Apple has put lots of effort into the iPhone 4 camera and once again proved that you do not need lots of Megapixals to take good quality pictures and video. Pictures are almost always of excellent quality and the more time you take, the better the result will be. It feels natural to use and crucially like you have some control over the process which is unusual in smartphone cameras. The flash works well and so far I have caught a few good snaps at night which other phones struggle to do.

Video capture is also very, very good and the sound and video quality are as good as I have seen on any other phone. The added bonus for iPhone photography is that there are many apps available which will help you to enhance the pictures you have taken in a variety of ways.

Galaxy S Camera: 7/10

For photos the Galaxy S is very good in decent lighting conditions and will serve as a worthy snapper in day to day use. However, the lack of a flash is the main reason it only gets 7/10 because this limits its use somewhat. A bizarre omission from Samsung.

Video capture is very good and only the sound quality lets it down a little. It is up there with the iPhone 4 for capture quality though.

HTC Desire Camera: 7/10

Image quality is excellent and worthy of inclusion in one of the highest specified Android smartphones. The flash works fairly well, but is not iPhone standard and the way the camera software works is not as easy as it could be.

Video recording is OK, but again suffers from poor sound capture which seems to be a problem in most smartphones no matter how much they cost. It is a worthy addition though, but it would be nice to see better in a smartphone of this specification.

Winner: The iPhone 4 takes the prize for the best smartphone camera out of the three. They are all good, but Apple has created something truly different which makes taking photos on a smartphone a pleasure rather than a chore.

Screen

From a practical point of view the screen is one of the most important parts of any smartphone and it needs to succeed in two areas. Firstly, it should be high resolution to display photos, video and lots of information in as good a clarity as possible and secondly it needs to be viewable in all conditions. Sadly not all manufacturers have figured this out yet.

iPhone 4 screen: 9/10

The Retina Display has created lots of discussion, but in the real world the fact that you cannot see the pixels does not make a huge difference. It is useful for games and photos, but I still believe that it is a feature that has been over marketed. However, the crispness of the screen cannot be ignored and so it does very well here.

It is also viewable in all conditions and only bright sunlight causes some glare and wash out, but not to the level you see on most other phones.

Galaxy S screen: 9/10

At 4” it offers more space than the others here and the Super AMOLED rivals the Retina Display in my opinion. Colours are perfectly reproduced and video and photos also benefit from the technology.

In bright conditions it is perfectly viewable and on a par, if not a little better, than the iPhone 4.

Finally, the technology is very easy on the battery and this can offer more flexibility with larger displays than other technologies.

HTC Desire screen: 6/10

The resolution is good and so is the size at 3.7” which come together to offer a pleasing experience, in preferable lighting conditions.

The fact is that the Desires screen performs better in bright sunlight than a lot of phones, but is streets behind the other two here and can almost wash out completely when the Sun is beating down. It is the one dark spot on an otherwise very well built phone.

Winner: I have to give it to the Galaxy S for a couple of reasons; it is bigger and it makes viewing photos and videos better than on the iPhone 4 which some of you may struggle to understand. When you use a Galaxy S in anger you soon start to realise that the screen is simply awesome.

Media

Video, games and music are fast becoming the staple diet of the latest and greatest smartphones and phones that are unable to compete in any one area soon fall foul of the media and ultimately the consumer.

iPhone 4 media: 10/10

Any iPhone has an immediate advantage because of the media that is immediately available to it with a couple of clicks. iTunes is tied to the iPhone like an umbilical cord and offers music, films, TV episodes, eBooks, Podcasts, apps, games and audiobooks which are all incredibly easy to buy and move over to the phone. The fact that you can rent films adds another dimension and all iPhones are capable of TV-out with the right cable so it can become your all in one entertainment centre.

Video playback on the iPhone 4 in HD is excellent and the music quality is simply awesome! There is little point in highlighting games and apps because they are plentiful and there are more than enough that offer a quality not previously seen on a mobile phone.

With a variety of eBook apps and publishers available over the air and through iTunes this media format is covered as well. There is nothing missing from the iPhone setup.

Galaxy S media: 8/10

Video is better on the Galaxy S than the iPhone 4 for obvious reasons, but you have to jump through some hoops to get the films and TV episodes over to the phone. Music quality is very good through the supplied headphones, but you have to be careful which ones you use with it. For example, my iPhone headphones sound terrible on the Galaxy.

There is a good selection of games, apps and eBooks available for Android and no Galaxy user will be left wanting, but it is not at the level of the iPhone system yet. It is also a bit hit and miss when you are trying to find good quality software because there is a lot of dreadful apps in the Android Market. I am not saying that there isn’t lots of dross in iTunes, but my perception is that there are more very good quality titles currently available and that the major services (shops, cinemas, banks etc.) think about the iPhone before considering other mobile platforms.

HTC Desire media: 7/10

I have covered the availability of apps etc. in the Galaxy sections and of course the Desire is running the same platform. Video playback is excellent again and so is music quality. The only negative sides are the screen in daylight and the hassle involved in moving media to the phone.

Winner: The iPhone 4 had to take the prize in this section because of the eco-system that is built around it. The astonishing sound quality is also on a whole new level compared to the competition and for effort alone it is hard to beat.

Ultimately, all three phones offer a media experience we could not have dreamed off two years ago and so they are all worthy purchases if this is most important to you.

Battery

Battery life is measured in hours these days and a smartphone that can last a day on one charge is often acclaimed as having a good battery. I disagree and probably always will because I still use voice a lot and prefer to use a phone for voice that I know for certain will get me through the heaviest of days. If I have three hours of conference calls, emails and whatever else I want to see at least 30% available by the time I get home in case the next day is even crazier.

iPhone 4 battery: 7/10

The iPhone 4 is better on battery than the 3GS, but the battery has been tweaked to offer superb efficiency for video and music playback. I still find that long calls will drop the meter too quickly and so my trusty BlackBerry is still my mainstay for voice calling.

Don’t get me wrong the iPhone 4 battery is adequate, but I still have a charger next to my bed, in my car, on my desks at work and home and in my briefcase.

Galaxy S battery: 8/10

The Galaxy S battery performs surprisingly well for almost all activities and I have found that more than a heavy day is possible, just. A very heavy day will kill it, but I don’t feel so concerned about the Galaxy battery as I do the iPhone.

HTC Desire battery: 6/10

It’s OK when compared to certain other smartphone, but HTC still hasn’t put battery life at the forefront of what it wants to do with smartphones. There will come a time, again, when things like the battery are seen as important features, but HTC is an example of a company that concentrates on this area less than some others.

Winner: Galaxy S.

Performance

I am please to say that for general performance we have reached a stage where the high-end smartphones move along at a consistently blistering pace and all of these are powered to the point that slow downs are a rarity. However, the iPhone 4 can stumble occasionally for me when too many big apps have been run in the recent past and seems to handle multi-tasking less well than the other two. The Desire also stumbles on occasion whereas the Galaxy seems to carry on no matter what I throw at it.

Winner: If I had to offer scores I would go for 9/10 to the Galaxy and 8/10 to the other two.

Call and Signal Quality

Let’s pretend that people still want to use smartphones to make voice calls and then we can look seriously at how well each of these phones perform in the real world.

They all offer a rich call quality experience, but the Galaxy S is special in this area. Here’s a quote from my review of the Galaxy- “The Samsung Wave surprised me with the sound quality during calls and the Galaxy S is arguably even better. Voice quality when next to your ear is rich and clear, but it gets even better when the speakerphone is used. It does not distort and even beats the BlackBerry Bold 9700 which makes it the first smartphone to do so. The loudness is just enough for the most testing of conditions so if you are one of the ever reducing number of smartphone users who actually makes calls this is an ideal choice.”

The iPhone signal is not half as bad as some would have you believe, but the speakerphone could sound more refined to me. As for the Desire, it marks a step up from HTC in this area with a rich sound marred slightly by the tinny speakerphone.

Signal is a contentious area at the moment, but I would again put the Galaxy (9/10) at the top with the Desire (8/10) next and the iPhone 4 (7/10) last. If I use my iPhone next to a Galaxy or Desire on the same network, it is still the only one that can suffer no signal at all. It is rare, but should never happen in 2010.

Software

We have two choices here- iOS and Android and I would still rate iOS as the better of the two, for me. Android has huge potential going forward and I fully expect to see more from it than iOS over the next 2 years, but at this time it feels more complete and polished. I want reliability and ease of use and iOS offers that in spades. 9/10 for the iPhone and 8/10 for the other two.

Conclusion

If I tot up the scores I end up with-

iPhone 4: 59
Galaxy S: 58
HTC Desire: 50

This kind of scoring is ultimately pointless because I could view one area as five times more important than another and so would concentrate on that more. What the scores do show is that there is very little to choose between the Galaxy S and the iPhone 4 and that each person will need to decide which is best for them. These two phones are way up my personal list and I find it hard to choose between them due to highs and lows in different areas, but the iPhone 4 just pinches it for me.

The HTC Desire has very quickly been overtaken by the other two and HTC needs to keep up the pace of development to keep up. More importantly, it needs to come up with something to get ahead of the pack because it is starting to fall into the Nokia trap of clinging on rather than leading.

The real positive here is that all three of these phones are light years ahead of what was available a mere twelve months earlier. I wonder what we can expect in August 2011?

AlwaysOnPC has announced its Virtual PC app for the iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones. It comes with a host of features including 2GB of online storage, more than 40 pre-installed programs and Firefox with Flash supported. It sounds to be good to be true, but it does offer quite a lot for the price. Hopefully some of the features will be tweaked to work slightly better in the future.

AlwaysOnPC delivers a combination of productivity tools and capabilities that frees users from their desktops. Using Open Office, users can edit, copy and paste between apps, and save most common file types including Word (.doc and .docx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), and Powerpoint (.ppt, .pptx) and more.

The lack of Flash has been a highly visible debate for Apple and a disappointment for users, until now. AlwaysOnPC delivers an iPad and iPhone Flash Player with Firefox so users can finally browse the whole Web on their device. Although it does not yet support audio or full motion video (these improvements are coming soon) customers still enjoy access to their favorite sites like Facebook games, Google Analytics, and more from their phones.

Hosted in the “Internet Cloud,” AlwaysOnPC offers an encrypted SSH connection to/from all devices. For users this means both rock-solid security as well as high performance for many common tasks. For example users can open large files, such as PDF files, PowerPoint decks or Excel Spreadsheets of 100Mb or more from an uploaded file, email attachment or an online storage folder such as Dropbox up to ten times faster than competing mobile solutions.

engadget has nabbed a video of the Dell Thunder. The 4.1″ screen looks impressive, but the overall design is somewhat industrial. Will be interesting to see how well it performs when it is finally released.

Samsung has released some premium accessories for the Galaxy S and they look as good as the phone itself.

Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile), the No. 1 mobile phone provider in the U.S., today announced a line of premium accessories for the Android-powered Galaxy S smart phone portfolio. The lineup of premium Galaxy S accessories, including a convenient desktop dock, vehicle dock and backup battery charging system, will provide users with an enhanced mobile experience for each of the Galaxy S smart phones.

The Samsung Galaxy S accessory lineup includes a small, compact desktop dock providing consumers an easy-to-use option to view their favorite movies, listen to music, display as a digital picture frame and use the desktop speakerphone when making hands-free calls while at a desk or in a home office. The Galaxy S desktop dock, which also doubles as a charger, allows for useful application downloads and internet browsing features such as Google Search by Voice, which allows users to speak their search query. Users can download the Desk Home application from the Android marketplace by searching for “desk home Samsung”. The Desk Home application can switch brightness levels from day to night and provides one-touch access to the Daily Briefing, alarm clock, music, pictures, movie gallery and local weather so that you can always stay up-to-date with daily activities.

The Galaxy S portable vehicle dock allows users to mount their device to a car windshield or dashboard and display turn-by-turn instructions for a safe, hands-free GPS navigation experience. Users can receive and display the latest traffic alerts, location-based information and activate the Google Search by Voice features when the Galaxy S smart phone is in the vehicle dock. The lightweight vehicle dock rotates freely between landscape and portrait modes and is attachable to either the windshield or car dashboard. The vehicle dock also contains a micro USB connection to conveniently charge a phone while in-use.

The Samsung Galaxy S accessories lineup offers an affordable charging solution that includes three components such as an extra 1500 mAh battery, a spare battery charger with phone stand and a wall charger for charging your phone and spare battery separately. The backup charger is small enough to fit in a pocket, purse or briefcase to transport and protect a charged backup battery allowing users smart phones to always stay powered-up while on-the-go.

Customers can also personalize Galaxy S smart phones with multiple protective case options, available in a variety of colors, patterns and fabrics to fit the needs of each consumer’s personal style. Additional Galaxy S accessories include a three-pack screen protector set with anti-scratch, mirror, and privacy screens as well as the Samsung WMG1602 Wi-Fi HD streaming device. The Samsung WMG160 allows users to stream movies, music, and photos directly from a Galaxy S smart phone to an HDTV.

For more information on retail availability and a complete list of Galaxy S accessories, visit www.samsung.com.

Jeepers! Kaspersky Lab has detected an SMS trogan which can affect Android smartphones. Here is the full press release-

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management solutions, announces that the first malicious program classified as a Trojan-SMS has been detected for smartphones running on Google’s Android operating system. Named Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, it has already infected a number of mobile devices.

The new malicious program penetrates smartphones running Android in the guise of a harmless media player application. Users are prompted to install a file of just over 13 KB with the standard Android extension .APK. Once installed on the phone, the Trojan uses the system to begin sending SMSs to premium rate numbers without the owner’s knowledge or consent, resulting in money passing from a user’s account to that of the cybercriminals.

The Trojan-SMS category is currently the most widespread class of malware for mobile phones, but Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a is the first to specifically target the Android platform. It should be noted that there have already been isolated cases of devices running Android being infected with spyware. The first such program appeared in 2009.

“The IT market research and analysis organization IDC has noted that those selling devices running Android are experiencing the highest growth in sales among smartphone manufacturers. As a result, we can expect to see a corresponding rise in the amount of malware targeting that platform,” says Denis Maslennikov, Mobile Research Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab. “Kaspersky Lab is actively developing technologies and solutions to protect this operating system and plans to release Kaspersky Mobile Security for Android in early 2011.”

Kaspersky Lab recommends that users pay close attention to the services that an application requests access to when it is being installed. That includes access to premium rate services that charge to send SMSs and make calls. When a user agrees to these functions during the installation of an application, the smartphone may then be able to make calls and send SMSs without further authorization.

The signature for Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a has already been added to Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus databases.

TweetDeck is close to release on the Android platform. There is a beta process required first though, which you can get involved in, and with a bit of luck the end results will be great.

“To get straight to the point, we’re nearing completion of Android TweetDeck and we’ve really been pushing the limits of what Android can do. Hence we will be opening up a public beta testing period this week for some serious device testing. But before all that happens I wanted to briefly explain what Android TweetDeck means to us because it’s more than just TweetDeck on Android.

First off, we’ve built Android TweetDeck from the ground up to be true multi-stream, laser focused on showing you all your friends’ cross-service activity in one app. Multi-column is still the order of the day but now columns are blended based on the type of activity rather than the service. And all this whilst retaining the most powerful functionality from each included service.

We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time making the app silky smooth from the column scrolling to the custom views – so much so that one of Google’s Android Developer Advocates recently described it as “a thing of beauty”. So look out for the beta test later this week and please do get involved.

Interestingly Android TweetDeck also represents the future of our iPhone and iPad applications. We’ll have a few bug fix releases shortly (awaiting approval in the app store) but in the background we are working on porting Android to iPhone in as quick a time as possible. Finally, it won’t be long before most of the new concepts in Android TweetDeck make it to the desktop and web – we’re also working on this now.”