Wireless

Don't expect to find tethering applications on the T-Mobile G1.

(Credit: CNET)

Google has reportedly pulled a tethering application from the Android Marketplace to mollify its first wireless carrier partner.

Android, which Google says "brings Internet-style innovation and openness to mobile phones," will apparently not support applications that violate the terms of service of its carrier partners, namely T-Mobile in this particular case. Seth, a developer who worked on an application called "Wi-Fi Tether for Root Users," said Tuesday that the application was pulled after Google pointed out that T-Mobile, the only wireless carrier shipping an Android phone, doesn't allow tethering.

Tethering, the act of connecting your mobile phone to your Mac or PC to use it as a modem, is allowed by some mobile carriers with the purchase of an extra data plan but forbidden by others. Their concern is that data sent and received via personal computers could overwhelm a wireless network, but some carriers, such as AT&T, are fine with the practice so long as you pay extra.

Google's apparent refusal to allow a tethering app is also confusing since Android handsets are expected to be eventually available on carriers around the world, some of whom permit tethering, and unlocked versions of the T-Mobile G1 are available for use on any network.

Is Google planning to create versions of the Android Market for specific carriers, where some applications are allowed and some aren't? While that may be business as usual in the mobile world, it's not exactly the strictest definition of "open."

For years, wireless carriers have been denounced as the force holding back innovation in this industry, fairly or unfairly. And Android, as originally envisioned by Google, was supposed to help break down those walls and become "an unprecedented mobile platform that will enable wireless operators and manufacturers to give their customers better, more personal and more flexible mobile experiences," according to the press release that announced Android's arrival in 2007.

In the past, Google has wrestled with the conflict between creating a truly open platform and the need to manage compatibility requirements and balance carrier relationships. The company did not respond to a request for comment on the Wi-Fi tethering application.

TeleNav GPS Navigator on the T-Mobile G1

(Credit: TeleNav)

On Thursday, TeleNav announced that starting February 24, it will make its location-based service, TeleNav GPS Navigator, available to T-Mobile G1 owners, bringing real-time turn-by-turn navigation to the Google Android smartphone.

In addition to turn-by-turn driving directions, TeleNav GPS Navigator offers traffic alerts with one-click rerouting, business searches (with more than 10 million listings), gas prices, weather updates, and restaurant reviews.

Speech recognition is also supported, meaning that you'll be able to press a button on the G1, dictate an address or business, and TeleNav will then route to the destination. Alternatively, you can preplan trips through TeleNav's Web site and send it to your phone.

TeleNav is no stranger to the business, providing its navigation services to a number of GPS-enabled smartphones and carriers, including Sprint and AT&T. Developing an application for Android and G1 owners was an important step for the company, according to TeleNav co-founder and Senior Director of Marketing Sal Dhanani.

The service will initially be available only through TeleNav but will then make its way to Android Market later this year. G1 users can go to TeleNav's Web site to sign up for a 30-day free trial of the service; afterward, it will cost $9.99 per month for unlimited use.

HTC and T-Mobile are readying a new version of the G1 Android phone, according to the gadget blog Gizmodo.

On Wednesday, Gizmodo posted pictures of what is supposed to be the new Android "G2," which the blog says is expected in May. The new device is much thinner than the previous G1 because its slide keyboard is gone. Instead, HTC has taken a page out of the Apple iPhone playbook and will only offer a virtual keypad.

Pictures of the new G2 also show that it will have a 3.2 megapixel camera. The new phone will operate on T-Mobile USA's network, and the interface will be "very similar" to the G1, according to Gizmodo's sources.

In September, HTC and T-Mobile introduced the first phone to use Google's open-source operating system, known as Android. So far, the G1 remains the only Android phone available on the market. But more phones are expected soon. While none of the big phone manufacturers announced Android devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, there will likely be plenty of action next month at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Rumors have already been flying around the blogosphere about which manufacturers will be next with their Android phones. Samsung is supposedly readying an Android phone that will go on sale in the second quarter. Sony Ericsson is also rumored to be working on an Android phone for this summer. And HTC is said to be working on a whole portfolio of Android devices.

Overseas, there are also reports that China's Huawei Technologies will have an Android phone ready for the Chinese market in the third quarter.

On the heels of Google revealing enhancements to its Android mobile platform, rumors are circulating that we may soon be seeing a new Android device.

The original Android phone: T-Mobile's G1.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The T-Mobile G2, as the device will reportedly be called, will debut on January 26, according to "rumors" reported by Cell Phone Signal. The new device is expected to have a 5-megapixel autofocus camera, VGA camera for video calls, a full touch screen, and Wi-Fi connectivity, according to the blog.

Boy Genius Report has reported a follow-up rumor that says those specs are pretty accurate, but that the release date will actually be in April. Boy Genius' tipster said the G2 wouldn't have a physical QWERTY keyboard, but there would still be a trackball at the bottom of the device.

The new device is also expected to be non-exclusive to T-Mobile and sold elsewhere around the world, according to Boy Genius.

This week, some of the changes made to the mobile operating system by a private group of developers came to light in Cupcake--the Android code the group shares with the outside world. Now, according to the Android road map, the Cupcake enhancements have started to be merged into the wider, open-source Android project.

Some of the changes coming to Android are bug fixes, affecting elements such as e-mail, conversation-list scrolling, and the alarm clock. Several new features are, however, also being added--for example, the ability to save MMS attachments. The Linux kernel upon which Android runs has been upgraded to version 2.6.27, and "basic x86 support" has been added.

The back of the Android Dev Phone 1.

(Credit: xda-developers)

Good news if you're a developer itching to get your creative developer hands on a T-Mobile G1--and especially good news if you happen to be a developer who lives outside an area covered by T-Mobile. Google has announced a SIM- and hardware-unlocked version of the first Android smartphone.

To get an Android Dev Phone 1, you'll first need to register as an Android developer on the Android Market site, which entails a one-time setup fee of $25. Then the device will cost you $399 (free shipping here in the States). To accommodate demand, Google says it's one device per developer account--for now.

The device will be available for purchase in 18 international markets, including the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, India, Canada, France, Taiwan, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Hungary. And more territories are on the way, Google says.

Now go build us some amazing apps, developers! Or if you're just pretending to be a developer to nab one of these, go enjoy your new unlocked smartphone!

Nokia N97

(Credit: Nokia)

Twenty-four hours after teasing us with news of a major product announcement, Nokia officially took the wraps off its mystery smartphone on Tuesday at the Nokia World 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. And despite some close guesses, no one got it quite right, so without further ado, let us introduce you to the Nokia N97.

Part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, the N97 trumps all previous models with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen (anyone else reminded of the AT&T Tilt or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1?). Yes, there's the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, but the N97 includes phone capabilities and is designed for the "needs of Internet-savvy consumers."

For example, the smartphone provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

The Home screen can be personalized with widgets of favorite Web and social-networking sites. Finally, the N97 is fully compatible with Nokia's Ovi Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage gaming platform--though these services have yet to fully launch in the United States.

The Symbian-based smartphone also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card.

The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T's 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however.

The G1's request to update its Android software. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Google has begun releasing some details about the vulnerabilities it patched in two updates to Google's Android operating system software in the T-Mobile G1 smartphone.

The company had acknowledged some of the work earlier, but it hasn't posted an official comment about the vulnerabilities. But Rich Cannings of the Android security team shared details about the RC29 and RC30 updates that T-Mobile began distributing to G1 customers at least as early as November 1 and November 9, respectively.

Google had acknowledged the RC29 patch for the G1 fixed a browser vulnerability that could have let an attacker use malicious code on a Web site to take over the browser. The severity of such issues is limited by Android's security design, which walls off applications into separate compartments to limit an attacker's power. But Cannings said the patch also fixed two other issues.

The Android browser is based on the open-source WebKit engine for converting HTML instructions into an actual Web page, and RC29 brought Android up to date with two patches that had been released but that Google had missed. One of them is a universal cross-site scripting problem that could give an attacker control of the browser, Canning said.

RC29 also fixed a problem that could let someone bypass Android's locking mechanism by booting the phone into safe mode.

Google plans to publish fuller details on its Android Security Announcements group soon, Cannings said, but the company waits until the patches have been offered to all users before disclosing full details.

RC30 and the root console bug
RC30, which came about a week later, fixed an unusual "root-console" problem in Android in which text that people typed--while composing e-mail messages or searching contacts, for example--could be executed as Linux commands with the highest-level privileges. One user found it by typing the word "reboot" in a text message.

The problem was that Google left in a feature that let programmers execute commands with a remote device attached over a serial port, but when there was no such device attached, the phone just used input from the keyboard.

Linux and Unix users are advised to use their systems with "root" privileges reserved only for administrators, but Android was actually giving anybody that privilege. The problem was lessened because many characters used in Linux commands, such as hyphens, tildes, and slashes, weren't available, but it was still a big problem, Cannings said.

(Credit: T-Mobile)

Ever since Apple's iPhone hit the market, some people have loved using a virtual keypad. Others have hated it.

Owners of Google's new G1 Android phones could soon have a choice to use either the existing slide-out QWERTY keyboard or a virtual keyboard like the iPhone's.

Google has added "soft keyboards" to its road map of future software releases. The new software hook is expected to be available for phone manufacturers as part of the source code in the first three months of 2009.

While there are many features to love about the G1, which is the first Android phone to hit the market, there are several items missing. A virtual keypad is one of them.

Without the touchscreen keypad, people have to slide out the QWERTY keypad to send text messages, IMs, and e-mail.

Download more than 1GB of data on your new G1 phone, and T-Mobile might severely restrict your bandwidth.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET Networks)

T-Mobile is warning G1 customers that they could get placed into the slow lane if they use more than 1GB of data in a billing cycle.

Engadget spotted the fine print underneath T-Mobile's G1 page on its Web site trumpeting the arrival of the first phone to run Google's Android software. "If your total data usage in any billing cycle is more than 1GB, your data throughput for the remainder of that cycle may be reduced to 50 kbps or less," the company warned.

Now, that doesn't apply to anything you download or upload over a Wi-Fi connection, and may not be much of an obstacle for some users. But if you're like a few folks inside our office--one of whom has used 187MBs in just the past 24 hours on his iPhone 3G--you're liable to hit that speed bump pretty quick. Downloading almost anything on a 50Kbps connection is going to be extremely frustrating.

T-Mobile might have trouble enforcing this cap, but they appear to be putting it in the contract. It's a confusing move, given the trend among carriers toward all-you-can-eat data plans, but could be a defensive maneuver to protect T-Mobile's young 3G network from being overwhelmed by G1 users.

Click here for full coverage of Google Android.