android

It seems like only yesterday that news surfaced that naughty words were being replaced by hash marks on Android phones.

Should you have missed this purely puritan entertainment, words such as the very common one beginning with an "f" were being censored by the built-in voice-to-text feature found on Google's mobile operating system. Even the latter half of "BS" became "####".

This appears, however, not to have been the half of it. CNET's readers are nothing if not disturbingly intelligent. And I am particularly grateful to Zechariah-Aloysius Hillyard from Boston who put his … Read more

Hardware specifications and details surrounding upcoming HTC Google Android handsets are coming to light. Two models in particular, the Bravo and Supersonic, are getting a lot of attention, which leads us to believe an announcement is coming soon. Much like the Nexus One and the Sony Ericsson Xperia 10, the new wave of Android handsets seem to all have two things in common: large screens and plenty of horsepower.

The HTC Bravo resembles the Nexus One, save for a few changes. Like the Nexus One, the Bravo features a 3.7-inch screen with 800x480 pixel resolution, a 5-megapixel camera, and … Read more

We've now had three weeks to play with the Nexus One, aka the "Google phone." After a lot of poking around under the hood, we still think that it's a great addition to the Google Android family and that it deserves our "Excellent" rating. But even so, there are three things with which we're not entirely comfortable.

3G reception and touch-screen Like with our CNET iPhone, we haven't experienced many problems with our Nexus One data connection. It's a little shaky in subway stations and deep inside buildings, but not much more so than other T-Mobile 3G phones. Yet, enough CNET readers have reported problems and T-Mobile admitted as much earlier this month. And earlier this week, the carrier said it is developing a fix, but cautioned that it may not solve the issues of all users. We're waiting to see what happens.

We've also aware that some Nexus One customers are having problems with their touch-screens. We haven't experienced this issue either, but we've heard from a lot of people who have. We tend to think this is more of a teething problem than an inherent flaw in the device, but we'll be watching this as well.

Yahoo e-mail As we've mentioned, we had trouble syncing Yahoo e-mail on the Nexus One when we tried the standard setup. Not only did we receive a message that the phone does not support all Yahoo accounts, but also it wouldn't recognize our user name and password. We finally were able to make it work using the manual setup, though it involved extra steps and information that isn't readily available.

If you're having trouble with Yahoo mail on your Nexus One, and we know that many of you are, try these steps.… Read more

Motorola ended 2009 on a mixed note, with a profit but drooping sales.

For the fourth quarter, the mobile phone maker turned a profit of $143 million, compared with a loss of $3.7 billion in the same quarter of 2008. The 2008 quarterly loss was largely attributed to nonrecurring charges that Motorola was forced to take.

Sales for the fourth quarter were a disappointment, though, falling 20 percent to $5.7 billion, versus $7.1 billion from the year-ago quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast revenue of $5.9 billion.

For the full year, Motorola lost $51 … Read more

Never have developers mattered more. As Apple readies its tablet announcement party for later Wednesday morning, the big question remaining is whether developers will join, or whether they'll join Google's Android and Chrome initiatives.

It's Apple vs. Google. And it's all about developers.

Microsoft has ruled the software market for decades because it won the hearts and minds of developers. But Microsoft has been slipping lately, and Apple has eagerly taken its place. Despite some early fits and starts, Apple has consistently given developers ways to make piles of cash, even as a global marketplace for mobile applications … Read more

The second permutation of Sharetones for Android 2.0 is here.

But what is it? If you're unfamiliar, Sharetones is an app that helps you coax ringtones out of songs you already own. At first blush, that sounds identical to Ringdroid, a free ringtone editor.

What's different here is that Sharetones caters to the lazy. Not everyone has the talent or time to make killer ringtones worth listening to time and again. Sharetones skirts the annoyance by comparing the songs you have on your phone with the songs it has in its user-generated online database. The Sharetones server … Read more

Microsoft's long and winding road toward regaining lost ground in the cell phone business will reach an important milestone in Barcelona next month.

At the annual Mobile World Congress event, Microsoft will at long last show off Windows Mobile 7--its oft-delayed major revamp of the decade-old Windows CE code base that has been at the core of its mobile operating system since the days of challenging the Palm Pilot.

Sources told CNET that Microsoft is still planning to finalize the code for Windows Mobile 7 by summer in order to have the new software on devices that ship before … Read more

After struggling throughout 2009, mobile phone maker HTC is eyeing an upturn in sales this year, though profit margins are still likely to be down.

Earlier this month, HTC announced a 31 percent drop in fourth quarter 2009 earnings to 5.6 billion Taiwan dollars ($175 million) from 8 billion ($250 million) in 2008's final quarter. Sales fell 13.2 percent to 41 billion Taiwan dollars ($1.28 billion) from 47.3 billion ($1.48 billion) the same quarter in 2008. Results were reportedly hurt by heavy spending on marketing as HTC aggressively tried to promote itself and its … Read more