Google’s semi-secret Nexus One handset has been more or less exhaustively leaked at this point, with very few cats left to let out of the bag. The only two major points left were the tech specs and the release date – and now, even those have made their way out.

Our friends over at Engadget just had a chat with someone who could spill the beans – and spill they did. Not only did they share the above spec sheet, but they also mentioned that Google’s planning on selling the Nexus One on an invite-only basis come January 5th.

What exactly that entails, we’ve got no idea. Who gets an invite? Certainly not Google employees – they already have the handsets. Long time Google app users? Members of the Android development community? Dudes named Greg who write about cell phones on the Internet all day? Either way, we just Google opens up sales to everyone before too long.

Highlight-worthy Specs:

• 3.7″ WVGA AMOLED Screen – Should be mind-blowingly gorgeous
• 119mm tall, 59.8 mm wide, 11.5mm thick – A hair thinner than the iPhone 3GS
• 512 MB RAM and 512 MB rom, with up to 32GB storage via microSD (4 GB comes in the box)
• HSPA 900 / 1700 / 2100 – It’ll work on EDGE on both T-Mo and AT&T, but 3G will be T-mobile only
• 802.11n Wi-Fi
• 5 Megapixel camera with Autofocus and Flash
• Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR

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The rumor mill has been cranking way too hard over Motorola as of late for us to feel confident in taking a stab at what they may launch, but Motorola has just more or less confirmed that they’ll be launching something at CES.

Got any guesses as to what it is? Drop it in the comments. We’ll come back on January 7th, run through all of them, and pick someone at random from those who got it right and send them a box of fun stuff we’ve got laying around the office.

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What’s the phrase? Oh, yeah: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. BlackBerry went down yesterday across North and South America. Users couldn’t send or receive e-mail, and some complained that they couldn’t connect to the Internet. It’s the second time in a week that BlackBerry has failed. Considering how important the service is to some people—I dare you to go to Wall Street and not see everyone using the device—you really do wonder: how long will people tolerate this shoddy service? It also raises the related question of, How wise is it to rely on “the cloud” to host all of your important data? Surely you wouldn’t leave “mission critical” information in the hands of someone else, someone who’s unsettling opaque when it comes to explaining outages?

Before we get into this, here’s RIM statement about this latest bit of downtime:

A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas. Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure. RIM has taken corrective action to restore service.

RIM has also provided a new version of BlackBerry Messenger (version 5.0.0.57) and is encouraging anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since December 14th to upgrade to this latest version which resolves the issue. RIM continues to monitor its systems to maintain normal service levels and apologizes for any inconvenience to customers.

I’ve never had an important thing to do in my life (clearly), so I’ve never really needed the BlackBerry’s always-on e-mail capability. I’ve never had a job on the line, or a fancy business account at stake, at that beck and call of RIM’s servers. So I read these “BlackBerry down~!” stories like you read international news: interesting to a degree, but nothing that’s going to upset the carefully choreographed rhythm of my day.

That’s not to say I don’t rely on services that I have zero control over. I use Gmail for both personal and professional (if that’s the word to use!) e-mail. If a tornado rips through Google’s servers I’m pretty much doomed. I play World of Warcraft for many, many hours per week. If Blizzard’s servers mysteriously vanished my playtime would have all been in vain. I listen to music now on Spotify (in fact, I haven’t downloaded an album in several months because of Spotify). What happens if aliens invade, shooting a death ray at the Spotify servers? There’s goes my music “collection”!

The point is, it’s hard not to run into, and use on a daily basis, services that you have very little control over. How many people do you know who run their own e-mail server? Who has backups of all the photos they store on Flickr or Facebook?

I know it’s not the same, but this latest BlackBerry outage does highlight my concern with everything moving to “the cloud.” Like I said, I haven’t downloaded an album in months because of Spotify, but what if the record labels suddenly decide to revoke their support? How is that any more wise than buying a cheap hard drive then stuffing it with MP3s and FLACs? Then buy a backup hard drive.

I guess this makes a cloud skeptic. (Incidentally, while my fellow CrunchGear writers will be at CES clutching to their phone to see their Google Calendar schedule, at the mercy of the wireless networks in Las Vegas, I’ll be walking around with a pen and a piece of paper stuffed into my wallet with a list of all of my meetings. A piece of paper won’t crash, and if AT&T dies in Las Vegas that week, and I fully expect that it will given all the iPhones that will be crawling up and down The Strip, I’ll be skipping along with everything I need in my pocket. It’s sorta like Steampunk, just not stupid.)

So as RIM gets BlackBerry up and running (to be fair, everything looks to be running just fine as of this writing), you do wonder how long people will continue to passively allow this to happen to them. What are you going to do the next time an outage happens, tweet your displeasure to the world? Provided Twitter itself isn’t down, of course.

Flickr

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The iPhone is already touted for its gaming prowess almost endlessly, but it looks like things are about to take a pretty big leap forward. Epic Games has been crackin’ away at an iPhone port of their Unreal Engine 3 — the engine that powers such jaw-droppingly beautiful games as BioShock, Mirror’s Edge, Gears of War 2, and a bunch of others — and they’re now far enough along that they’re looking to show it off.

The first person lucky enough to get some hands-on time with the engine was Anand over at Anandtech, who seems to have walked away impressed. The stuff we’ll see on the iPhone obviously aren’t going to be pixel-for-pixel matches with that found on the current generation of consoles; textures will be downsampled, lighting and shading effectswill be toned down, etc. With that said, it ought to be pretty dang gorgeous.

It’ll still be a while before we see any games powered by the engine. Epic currently has no plans to get into the iPhone space for themselves, though they plan to license the engine some time in the near future. Epic has been been far more aggressive in pricing their engine licensing lately than they have in years prior, going as far as to give it away for free for noncommercial/educational use. Will they keep things cheap for the iPhone variant? We sure hope so.

Lastly: They’re not giving any specifics, but Epic’s also planning on showing off the engine running on a different mobile platform at CES. All things considered, it’s probably not webOS or BlackBerry OS – and that only leaves so many options. Any guesses?

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[Via Engadget]

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Ranking cell phone companies is a tough thing to do. Some of these companies have a bunch of popular handsets, whilst others have just one or two yet manage to sell as many or more. Rank the companies by cumulative sales across all of their lines and the results will swing one way; rank them model-by-model, and they might look completely different.

Such is the case with the iPhone, according to the latest numbers from The Nielsen Company. While RIM’s marketshare with their BlackBerry line is still nearly double that of Apple’s, the iPhone has now surpassed everything else to become the most popular phone in the US.

The iPhone’s lead is fairly tight, coming in at 4.0% of all mobile phone owners while the BlackBerry 8300 series follows closely behind at 3.7%. The rest of the list is made up primarily of feature phones, outside of appearances by the BlackBerry Storm and the BlackBerry 8100 series in 7th and 10th respectively. As the iPhone 3GS doesn’t make an individual appearance on the list, we’re assuming that they’ve combined the 3G and 3GS into one product line.

A few more interesting tidbits gleaned from the Nielsen report:

• The most popular reason people pick pre-paid phones isn’t because the lack of contract — that’s actually #4 — but because the plans are more straightforward. It’s followed by “No monthly bills” and “Emergency use only”.
• 21% of households now use mobile phones only, with no land line to call their own. This is up from 15% in 2006
• 15% of households now own at least one smartphone

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Taptu, the mobile search engine, announced a partnership with OneRiot last month to provide real time search results in their mobile-friendly web site. This worked from any mobile client, not just the iPhone. But one of the points of using a smartphone is the use of native applications. Today Taptu announced that they’ve rolled the real-time search results into their iPhone app.

With the new version, we have added integration with OneRiot, including:

• Real-time hot topics right on the home page
• Real-time search results that appear alongside other search results
• Filter for Real-time results

In addition to OneRiot integration, we added a few other things in to this 1.6 update :

• Thousands of new Touch-friendly sites
• Re-tuned the engine to improve relevancy including one-tap access to the most popular site
• Super fast pre-loading of source sides while connected via Wi-Fi
• Bug fixes & memory leak fix

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Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile version of Firefox, is “days away” from release. It will initially be available for the Nokia N900; don’t expect an iPhone version anytime soon.

If all goes according to plan, the browser should be available before the end of the year. It’s been in development for a year and a half.

What will Fennec do to convince you to try it out, much less switch to it full-time (provided you have a Nokia N900, of course)? There’s a clever syncing feature that ensures whatever you view on your desktop version of Firefox will be available on the mobile version. That is, if I’m reading the Wikipedia entry on, say, WrestleMania 10 on my desktop, that same Web page will be displayed when I launch the mobile version of the browser. Handy, yes.

Fennec will have tabbed browsing. The AwesomeBar also makes an appearance.

And yes, there will be Add-Ons. Whether that means you’ll be able to load up Adblock Plus (don’t leave home without it!) and Scriptmonkey and so forth isn’t exactly clear. Maybe you’ll need mobile-specific Add-Ons?

As for that iPhone version jab: since when did Apple approve Apps that replicate “core functionality” of the iPhone? (Mobile Safari says hi.) Your best bet is to hope someone is able to get the code up and running on Apple’s little device, then releases a binary on one of those Jailbroken App repositories.

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As stringent (and arguably overzealous) as Apple’s App review policy is, things still slip through the cracks from time to time. I mean, who can forget the infamous baby shaking simulator slip-up? The latest bit of contraband to hit the App Store isn’t nearly as offensive – that is, unless you’re Nintendo.

Earlier today, an application called “Nescaline” popped up on the App Store. Everything about the application, from the name, to the copyrighted icon, to the very functionality of the application rang of something that Apple would generally deny without batting an eye.. and yet, there it was – for all of one day, at least.

You see, Nescaline is an emulator of 1985’s living room king, the Nintendo Entertainment System. By duplicating the functionality of the system’s hardware in software form, Nescaline would allow you to play NES games on your iPhone. You’re stuck with slightly frustrating touchscreen controls instead of the sharp-cornered, palm-destroying original controller – but hey, it was old school gaming on the go.

It’s worth noting that Nescaline didn’t include any copyrighted games out of the box, instead providing just a handful of community-made home brew games. However, if the user just so happened to know the URL of another ROM — be it another home brew game or an unlicensed copy of Super Mario — Nescaline would download the ROM to its internal library.

The legality of applications of this sort are endlessly debated, and remain in a bit of a legal gray area. Apple avoids any potential copyright battles by banning “executable code”, a term just vague enough to work wherever its convenient. They’ve thus far denied all emulator submissions, including those that had their licensing in order. If you want an emulator on the iPhone, you’ll have to jailbreak first.

Apple’s negative stance on emulators is something that fans of Android love to poke fun at, considering that emulators are amongst the most popular on Google’s platform. While Google’s not about to come out and officially support console emulation, the only apps they won’t sell are those that are malicious, explicitly illegal, or adult in nature – none of which fits the bill for most emulators.

Nescaline went up on the App Store early this morning, and was pulled by the end of the night. Assuming that this was an accident and not some App Store reviewer’s way of resigning, we’re left wondering: how’d this happen? The app’s description clearly explains everything – and even if they didn’t read a word of that, the app’s icon was a friggin’ Super Mario mushroom. Maybe the “Approve” and “Deny” buttons are just right next to each other.

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Call us crazy, but we don’t think you’d host a “Mobile Launch Party” at CES unless you were planning.. you know, a mobile launch of some sort – and when it comes to mobile launches, companies generally don’t co-host parties unless they’re launching a phone together.

So when we get a heads up letting us know that Sprint and LG will be throwing a party at CES, it’s a pretty clear sign that somethings up. While we can’t be 100% sure what they’re launching, we can make some pretty well educated guesses.

What it might be, but probably isn’t: LG and Sprint are pitching the party under the tagline of “Celebrate Style”. When it comes to LG phones, it doesn’t get much more stylish than their Prada line. Fortunately for us, they’ve already confirmed a Prada III is in the works. Celebrities, lavish parties, style – it all just fits together too well.

Alas, the fact that Sprint is involved makes it significantly less likely. If Sprint were to carry the Prada phone, it’d be the first time any of the Prada line appeared in CDMA form — not to mention it’d be the first time a Prada phone appeared on a US carrier, period.

What it might be, and probably is: The LG Lotus 2. We scooped all the details on the LG Lotus 2 back in October. Launching in January? Check. Heading for Sprint? Yep. Whether or not you think the original Lotus was all that stylish, Sprint certainly does; right out of the first line of the original press release:

Fans of the fashion runways will appreciate the couture style of LG Lotus, exclusive to Sprint.

So there you have it, folks. Until further evidence arises, consider our bets hedged on Sprint/LG launching the Lotus 2 at CES.

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Outside of a completely simulated appearance in a commercial, we’ve been hard-pressed in finding any video of the LG eXpo’s projector attachment in action. We expected to see some hit the Tubes after the handset launched last week – alas, the projector accessory still hasn’t hit the shelves.

Fortunately, the guys over at MobileSyrup have managed to scrounge one up north of the border. Their verdict? It “looks good” (looks a bit dim to us, even in the blacked out room) but the projection unit gets surprisingly warm with use. That’s probably pretty unavoidable given the concept of slamming a projector into an itsy-bitsy box – just be sure to give it a minute or two to cool down before you stuff it back into your pants. There’s sensitive stuff down there, you know?

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Man, that was a surreal headline to write. Two baked goods in one sentence, and we’re not even talking about Android.

With over 10 million units pushed, the Cookie is LG’s best selling device ever. It should come as no surprise, then, that it’s getting a sequel.

According to information leaked to PhoneArena, the second coming of the Cookie is tentatively titled the “Muffin”. We’re not sure when it’s set to come out of the oven – but when it does, it’ll reportedly pack a 3″ capacitive touchscreen, 5.0 megapixel camera (as compared to 3.0 on the original), WiFi and HSDPA, Dolby Mobile Sound, and LG’s signature S-Class user interface.

If LG’s going about the Muffin with the same mindset as the original, we can probably expect this to launch somewhere between $250-$350 before taxes and carrier subsidies.

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Unlike here in the States, the iPhone exclusivity deal for the UK wasn’t a big pile of absurd. O2 got exclusivity for 2 years. Once that was up, it was an open game where just about any carrier was free to hop on the iPhone – and hop they have.

Looking to stay competitive with the likes of O2 and Orange UK, Vodafone has just officially confirmed that they’ll be launching the iPhone on January 14th of 2010. £35 a month will get you a free 8GB 3G, while a 32GB 3GS will set you back an additional £239 up front.

[BBC via EngMo]

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I’ve been using the AT&T Navigator app for iPhone for a couple of months now. This is a free app, but it requires a $10/month subscription from AT&T (or $70 for an annual subscription). I’m not going to belabor the GPS functions too much in this review: it’s almost the year 2010, and the global positioning system has been used to provide turn-by-turn directions for long enough now that any GPS device or application being reviewed should do that basic job. Instead, I’m going to examine how useful a GPS function is on your mobile phone, talk about some of what’s nice (and not-so-nice) about the AT&T Navigator, and look at the value proposition of a $10/month subscription in light of Google’s free turn-by-turn driving directions on the Verizon Droid.

The Not-So-Good
The first thing to know about the Navigator application is that it suffers from the iPhone’s inability to support “background apps”. That is, if you want turn-by-turn directions, you need to leave the Navigator app running on your phone. You can’t pop over to check your email, or even take a call or reply to an SMS, without interrupting the navigation. When you’re on a long stretch of highway, that’s not a big deal; but it can be a little frustrating if you’re sitting in the passenger seat and trying to multitask on your fancy smartphone. (You should never multitask on your fancy smartphone if you’re driving the car!)

The good news, though, is that iPod functionality is well integrated into the app. With the press of an on-screen button, you can have access to your playlists, media navigation controls, and more. The music will be muted when the Navigator app needs to speak to you, which minimizes some of the concerns about the always-on nature of the app.

The second thing to know about the Navigator app is that it’s frequently just a little slow. This is a result of being just a little weak in terms of positioning accuracy. It consistently reports me as being anywhere from 50 to 500 feet away from where I actually am. Again, while driving down the highway this isn’t a big deal; but when navigating city streets it’s mighty frustrating to be instructed to turn left onto the street you just passed.

Also, it’s really slow to start up. This is frustrating when you wind up popping in and out of the app — whether because you’re making a call, or using another app. You need to wait patiently for the app to start before you can use it. If you’re en route, it usually remembers this, and asks you if you want to continue navigating to your destination. On a couple of occasions, though, exiting the app while en route resulted in a lost route. When I started the app again, I was presented with the home screen. It seems that there’s a minimum threshold for how long a route must be active before the app saves it. Put another way: don’t start navigating somewhere and then immediately close out of the app.

Finally, the app is really fond of U-turns. If I miss a turn, it will as often as not suggest that I make a U-turn. Maybe that’s okay in most parts of the world, but in Columbus, OH U-turns are illegal except at a few specifically designated intersections. If I don’t make a U-turn, I send the application into a fit as it tries to re-route me with every turn I make. I don’t mind being told to make a U-turn: I know I’m not supposed to do it, so I don’t. Instead, I make a couple of right or left turns to effectively get pointed back in the other direction. The Navigator app has no idea of my intentions, of course, and merrily recomputes a new route for me with every turn.

The Good
That sounds like a lot of negatives, and to be fair they’re legitimate concerns. But in all honesty, I’ve really enjoyed using this application. It’s been my experience that the routing is really good. I’ve never gotten lost using it, and it’s never given me a braindead route that causes problems. Indeed, on a Thanksgiving roadtrip to Cartersville, GA, it provided perfect directions to my sister-in-law’s house in a new development, while my mother-in-law got lost following the instructions from Google Maps.

Real-time traffic reports are included in the subscription fee. That, too, helped at Thanksgiving, so that I could know how far traffic would be bumper-to-bumper as we exited the city.

Probably the biggest selling point for the Navigator app, though, is the use of a server-based routing mechanism. Instead of loading all the map data onto your handset, the map data lives with Telenav. This means that updates can be made in real time, in reaction to important events. For example, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge was closed over the Labor Day weekend this year. If you were using a traditional GPS device, it likely would have been ignorant of this fact, and happily told you to take the bridge to get out of town, leaving you stuck in traffic. Telenav routed around the bridge, since they knew it would be closed, thereby saving their customers a lot of frustration and wasted time.

A recent update to Navigator added full landscape support, which is a nice feature to have. I didn’t have any problems using the application strictly in portrait mode, but landscape is certainly handy sometimes! Here’s a video in which you can see it, and the iPod controls, in action:

So, how does AT&T Navigator, at $10/month, stack up against Google’s mapping service on the Verizon Droid? Alas, I’m not able to answer that question, yet, since I don’t have a Droid. I did ask both AT&T and Telenav, though, how they think things compare.

Here’s a quick comment from Todd Witkemper, from Telenav:

In general, here are a few differentiators that TeleNav products provide that Google Navigation does not have:

• Proven map data that is consistently updated (I’ve read multiple reviews of Google Navigation where the reviewer received incorrect routing)
• Online preplanning/account management
• A real person’s voice for majority of audio commands (vs. text to speech computerized voice)
• Proactive traffic alerts with one-click rerouting (you don’t have to change views to see traffic updates)
• Real-time gas prices, weather, WiFi hot spot listings, commute alerts and movie listings/ticket purchasing (movie info on AT&T Navigator 1.8)
• Route style options like avoiding HOV lanes and toll roads
• Location-sharing

TeleNav also supports more than 500 devices in multiple countries.

Seth Bloom at AT&T adds:

AT&T Navigator remains one of our most popular apps to date. We have a great, open and ongoing dialogue with our Navigator customers and feel confident in our track record of making enhancements based on real-time customer feedback.

More choice is always great for consumers, but we’re confident with this app and with our interactive dialogue with our customers that is helping ensure they get a premier voice and visual turn-by-turn GPS experience.

Bottom Line: if you don’t yet own a dedicated GPS, and you’re tired of the shortcomings of the iPhone’s Maps app, the Navigator app is a good option. Be sure to pay the yearly fee, rather than month-by-month.

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Maine could well become the first state in the Union to require cellphone manufacturers to add a cigarette-like warning to cellphone packaging. The idea is to remind people that cellphones may be dangerous, and that you would do well to limit your exposure to them.

Of course, for every study that comes out that says cellphones may be dangerous, there’s another that says they’re not, or, at the very least, that more data is necessary to make any conclusions.

Whether or not the warning message should be added will be brought before the Maine Legislature next month in a session that’s “usually reserved for emergency and governors’ bills.”

The proposed warnings would advise people, especially children and pregnant women, to limit their exposure to cellphones.

For its part, the CTIA, which is the mobile industry’s public face, says that it always bases its policies on hard science. To date, there has been no definitive “eureka!” study. Of course, that ignores the numerous studies that say, “you know, there’s some evidence here that says we should limit exposure.”

Besides, why make sure a big deal about a warning sticker? What’s so bad about limiting your exposure to cellphones?

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As MobileCrunch reported back in August, three of Japan’s eight top cell phone makers, namely NEC, Casio and Hitachi are going to merge their cell phone businesses next year. Under the agreement, NEC plans to integrate its handset division into a tie-up that already existed between Hitachi and Casio starting April 2010 (the begin of the new fiscal year under the Japanese business calendar).

In the meantime, the companies involved decided on a name for the new venture: NEC Casio Mobile. The company’s capitalization stands at a relatively modest $55 million, with NEC holding a 71% stake, Casio 20% and Hitachi 9%. And as I speculated in my previous article, that new company plans to enter the global market in a (relatively) aggressive way.

NEC Casio Mobile plans to ship a total of five million handsets in markets outside Japan, up more than 200% from the numbers for fiscal 2008 (handset sales of NEC, Casio and Hitachi combined). By the end of 2011, the new company wants to sell handsets, including “smartphones”, in North America. NEC Casio will also enter the Mexican and Australian markets by that time.

In fiscal 2008, the three companies involved in the new venture shipped a combined 8.9 million cell phones, 1.5 million of which found their way outside Japan. NEC Casio follows both Sharp and Panasonic in their plans to bring made-in-Japan cell phones abroad.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

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It’s just after 12 o’clock here on the left coast, which means Operation Chokehold should now be in full effect. What that means (if anything at all) is still up in the air — which is why we’re turning to you for a status report.

For the uninitiated: Operation Chokehold is a sort of cyber-protest against AT&T, as conjured up by some dude playing a dude disguised as another dude. For one solid hour between 12 and 1 Pacific, angry iPhone owners are supposed to gobble up as much data as they can in an “attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees.”

The discussion on the merits of this bit of disobedience have already been done into the ground, so we won’t dive into that. The FCC and ATT have already condemned the whole thing, and Fake Steve has back-pedaled a bit to make it clear that the whole thing was intended as a joke. Joke or not, its taken off with a life of its own now – some people are taking this pretty dang seriously.

With all that said, we want to know: has Operation Chokehold affected the quality of your AT&T connectivity? Here in San Jose, CA things seem as good as ever — that is, they’re not all that great, but certainly don’t seem worse than normal. Let us know where you’re at and how the 3G network is acting in your area down in the comments.

[Image via Kakiseni]

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Samsung already managed to get the Samsung Corby down to a surprisingly dirt-cheap price tag, packing in a 2.8″ touchscreen, 2 MP camera, and FM radio for less than $200 bucks — unlocked, and without contract. It seems that wasn’t enough, however – according to the latest whispers from the rumor mill, they’re aiming even lower.

According to Unwired View, Samsung’s cracking away at a new uber-cheap handset called the Corby Pop. There aren’t any pictures of the Corby Pop yet – in its place, please accept this picture of a ham sandwich.

The new handset purportedly maintains the touchscreen display and FM radio, but bumps the camera down to 1.2 megapixels. It’s about as low on the totem pole as new phones come nowadays – but at a rumored unlocked price of around $150 bucks, we doubt the buyers will be complaining.

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If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve never played Doodle Jump. Why? Because if you had ever played Doodle Jump, you’d probably still be playing it. The game is addictive gaming at its finest; it’s drop dead simple, yet ridiculously tough to put down. If I had to babysit a kid, I’d just hand them Doodle Jump and then go off and do something else for a few hours. They wouldn’t even notice I left.

Being insanely catchy has paid off. This morning, Doodle Jump’s developers, Lima Sky, are announcing that they’ve smashed through the 1 million download mark – an especially impressive feat when you consider the circumstances.

You see, Lima Sky isn’t some huge development company – they don’t have a massive advertising budget, a team of artists, or PR flacks to do their bidding. Lima Sky is made up of two brothers, Igor and Marko Pusenjak, who do everything from writing the code to reaching out to the media. With each of the 1 million copies sold at 99c a pop, the two brothers are probably swimming around in about $690k after Apple took their cut – not too shabby for a two-man operation.

Lima Sky didn’t just rest on their laurels and ride their way to the top of the App Store. While they did put some of their revenue back towards small ad campaigns, a significant chunk of their downloads stems from the brother’s constant care. Doodle Jump has seen nearly constant updates since launch, with each update adding in a new layer to the game. One update gave the player the ability to shoot, drastically changing the entire mechanics of the game and giving people a reason to strive for a new high score. A more recent update which overhauled the graphics with a Christmas motif (if you named your character “Snow”) was surprisingly well-received, pushing it back into the Top Paid section in countries where it had gone unnoticed.

Of course, a mention on a popular TV show didn’t hurt either.

You can find Doodle Jump on the App Store here.

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Hey, good on Samsung for trying to make their own OS. I’m sure it will be wonderful for them. It saves them from having to, I don’t know, use Android? But what’s with all the Nokia Series 60 font usage in the UI?

These screenshots, which are floating around right now, show some of the UI elements of the new OS, Bada. The font they’re using is approximately (or exactly, I’m not a font scientist (fontographer?)) the same font used on most Series 60 Symbian phones.

Considering Samsung used to use Symbian it’s not a far reach to think that their UI team just hung on to some bad habits but S60 brings up a lot of bad memories for people.

Or could the worst be happening and is Samsung building Bada on top of Symbian, which is now ostensibly open source? We’ll ask, but we probably won’t want to know the answer.

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If you remember, Bada is Samsung’s new mobile OS, allegedly open, but not quite public yet. Or at least, that was the plan. Looks like a few screenshots from Samsung’s new mobile OS hit the wire a little early. So what have we got?

It’s a pretty nice-looking thing from these shots, though static screens really aren’t a good indicator of how good the OS will actually be — and, of course, who knows what hardware this is going to be running on? But at least we’ve got nice clean maps, native social network clients, and… well, the music and main menu are a bit uninspired, but they could be worse, that’s for sure.

[via Gizmodo and Unwired View]

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Hot on the heels of the launch of their Dragon Dictation app (and a short-lived and mostly overblown privacy scandal), Nuance has just launched a second iPhone application: Dragon Search.

Heralded by Nuance as the “fast, accurate, and smart way to search online content on your iPhone”, Dragon Search allows iPhone users to search across Google, Yahoo!, Bing, iTunes, Twitter, Wiki, or YouTube by speaking their search terms.

Dragon Search is powered by the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine, just as with Nuance’s other offering. If you’re having good luck with Dragon Dictation, you should see similar results here.

The design of the application is rather clever; while you’re only shown one search engine’s results at a time, you can flip between them on a whim via the carousel at the top. You can search for Dr. Dre’s Wikipedia page, then flip over a few boxes on the carousel to check out Dre’s music videos videos on YouTube.

Like the Dragon Dictation app, Nuance is saying that the app is available for free for “a limited time”. We’re not sure when they’re planning to bump it up to for-pay, nor the price they’ll charge – but in the meanwhile, you can nab it here for the always-welcome price of free: App Store link.

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Apple just pushed out a new, Holiday-themed commercial. Playing on the classic “12 Days of Christmas” song, they rattle off a different type of application for each of 12 days. They make no mention of baby shaking applications, which isn’t too surprising – “baby shaking” has way too many syllables to fit the tune.

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I’m not sure if there were anybody was waiting in lines outside of AT&T stores when the LG eXpo launched last week – but if they were, they left sorely disappointed. Without much notice or acknowledgement, the eXpo’s December 7th launch date came and went.

Just shy of two weeks later, the eXpo is now available on AT&T.com. Alas, the flagship feature — the optional, detachable projector — is nowhere to be seen. I guess for the time being, there really is “no such thing as an LG Phone and Projector“.

[Via WMExperts]

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Remember that crazy lookin’ Motorola-made Android handset that leaked out a few days ago? The one that appeared to have a flip-out keyboard on a big ol’ hinge? It’s real – and it’s heading for AT&T.

The name is still up in the air, but it looks like it’ll be called either the “Backflip” or the “Enzo”.

Someone snuck a bunch of shots of the unique handset into Phandroid’s inbox, and there’s no doubt about which carrier this is on. As if the AT&T logo sitting smack dab on the keyboard didn’t seal the deal, AT&T-specific apps like AT&T Nav and AT&T Music are in plain sight. When closed, the keyboard acts as the back of the phone; when open, the backside of the keyboard acts as a trackpad for scrolling with minimal hand readjustment.

It’s a few years late on this train, but AT&T’s finally getting an Android phone. It’s just a bit wonky.

[Source: Phandroid]

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Oh noes! BIS is down for nearly everyone in the States and Canada. It’s really just the email service. Web browsing, SMS, BlackBerry messenger, and phone calls are seemingly fine. We’ll keep you updated, but it seems like a good time to give your thumbs a rest. You’ll have to get back to work soon enough. [CrackBerry via Gizmodo]

Update: RIM has confirmed the outage, but didn’t state when the service will be restored.

Update 2 @ 1:50 pm EST:It might be coming back…we’re getting a flood of emails now. Waiting for a confirmation from RIM.

Update: Got it. Everything should be all good again. Now get back to work.

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It’s big in Korea, it’s probably big in China’s grey market, and the iPhone continues to be big in Japan. According to a report [JP] released by Tokyo-based research company Impress R&D, the iPhone has captured a whopping 46.1% of the domestic smartphone market.

For this year, Impress sees the 3G commanding 24.6% in this segment, while the 3GS contributes another 21.5%. The 3G was introduced in Japan in summer 2008 (the 3GS followed earlier this year). Sources in Japan say that the iPhone user base in Japan now stands at 3 million, which is an impressive 10% of the global userbase.

Three models from Willcom, a Japanese mobile phone carrier, are ranked 3 to 5. The HTC HT-03A (aka HTC Magic), the first Android phone in Japan, made it to No. 10 (2.3%). The BlackBerry Bold, which is offered by Japan’s No. 1 carrier Docomo, is one rank behind with 1.2%.

A major reason for this development is the hyper-aggressive marketing strategy SoftBank Mobile, the iPhone’s exclusive carrier, pursues in Japan: TV commercials virtually around the clock, print ads in major media, super-competitive pricing etc. do have an effect, it seems.

On the other hand, I’ve never seen any of this coming from Docomo for Android or BlackBerry, so it’s no wonder virtually no one in Japan (where I live) knows what these devices actually offer – apart from geeks, obviously.

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Oh my. This can’t be what Redmond had planned. But I guess they should have spent more time revising their platform during the years and years they dominated the smartphone field. Now, with the triple threat of consumer-accessible Blackberry devices, cheap iPhones, and legions of Android handsets, it seems that even WinMo 7 may be too little, too late. iPhone users now outnumber WinMo users, according to a recent ComScore survey.

The growth of the iPhone and, more importantly, the stagnation of WinMo sales and devices, had to lead here eventually. It was just a matter of when, and apparently “when” was sometime before October, when the data from the survey was collected.

What’s next? Well, Blackberry and Apple will have to fend off Android, which will be arming the vast featurephone population with cheap, capable devices. That’s still a ways off, but Google has momentum on its side. Should be an interesting year.

Wait a second, what’s with the Symbian population going up?! Gross!

[via Electronista]

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When you’re running on a hot streak of smash hits, it’s not too tough to find investors. Such is the case for Smule, the developers behind I Am T-Pain, Ocarina, Leaf Trombone, and a handful of other App Store success stories.

Today, Smule is announcing that they’ve secured an $8 million dollar round of Series C funding. That’s an absolutely massive pot for a development house focused solely on the iPhone, and it more than doubles Smule’s total funding thus far.

This latest round of funding was lead by Shasta Ventures, and backed by Bessemer Venture Partners and Granite Ventures. Both of the latter companies had invested in Smule before; Bessemer fueled Smule’s $1.6 million seed round, and joined Granite Ventures and Maple Investments for their $3.9 million Series B. All in all, Smule’s total funding to date is coming in at around $13.5 million.

All the fledgling entrepreneurs out there fighting for funding might want to plug their ears at this point; turns out, Smule wasn’t exactly looking to vie for backing right now. Jeff Smith, CEO and co-founder of Smule, on the topic:

“Candidly we were not planning on raising capital at this stage of our business plan. Yet as we got to know the partnership at Shasta, we found they had a similar perspective on the importance of innovation, and a robust understanding of the new consumer market realities. We are therefore excited to have them join us on our mission to redefine the mobile social experience.”

So, what is Smule planning to do with the new-found cash? Make more iPhone apps, of course. It’ll also go toward expanding the “Smule Sonic Network” which serves as the backbone for their applications.

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Just a few days ago, the voice recognition connoisseurs over at Nuance released Dragon Dictation, an iPhone app which would automatically transcribe your voice into text messages and emails.

All was well and good at first; the response to the app was generally quite positive, and the app itself seemed to work pretty dang well. Soon after release, however, controversy was abound; someone stumbled across a section of the End User License Agreement which stipulated that the application would upload a list of your contacts to their server. Just like that, the paranoia train barreled out of the station.

Word of the application’s seemingly loose lips hit the blogosphere, and it’s App Store ratings took the brunt of the hit. Of 6212 ratings, 2777 were one star (out of five). Of those who took the time to write why they gave it such a low rating, the very vast majority were complaining of privacy concerns.

Nuance moved to address the concerns, putting up a blog post which clearly stated why they were uploading user contacts, and what they were doing with them:

We do this for a pretty simple reason: we found that people are often dictating names from their address book and expect the names to be recognized. We take this information and create an anonymous user profile for your device that understands what names are likely to dictate into a document. It’s important to note that we only upload the names, not the e-mail addresses, phone numbers or any other personally identifying information from your contacts.

In the end, they weren’t snagging your contacts for the sake of harassing your friends or informing the government of your corrupt cohorts. They were trying to improve the accuracy of the application on a user-by-user basis by checking your contacts for names it should know. No harm there.

The harm, however, was in the fact that they were doing it without user consent. You and I might not have anything to hide in the list of people we keep at an arms reach – but that doesn’t mean others don’t, nor does it mean we want that information silently passed on to third parties. We’ll gladly make such information available on Facebook, but we do it knowingly.

Today, Nuance has released an update which does away with the woes once and for all. Upon first launching the application, users are now given the choice as to whether or not their contacts are uploaded. Additionally, users still feeling burned by the automatic upload can delete all previously uploaded contacts from the server.

At this rate, I’d imagine Apple is considering making user consent a mandatory prompt before contacts can be accessed at all, similar to the mandatory GPS prompt.

You can find the new release of Dragon Dictation on the App Store here (Note: As of around noon this morning, some users are reporting that they’re still getting version 1.0 when they download.)

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Nothing kills the productivity amongst myself and my roommates like accidentally stumbling across an episode of the Discovery Channel’s Cash Cab. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, the premise is pretty simple: a snarky bald dude drives around New York in a cab, surprising passengers with the opportunity to win some cash by answering trivia questions.

There’s just something about the wise-crackin’ cab driver — not to mention the opportunity to make yourself feel smart compared to a bunch of grumpy New Yorkers — that keeps our eyes glued. Unfortunately for our hopes of ever getting anything done, the Cash Cab is now cruising the streets of Pocketville.

Just released this morning by Capcom, the iPhone version of Cash Cab is a wee bit less brain-racking than the show that inspired it; where as contestants have to pull most of their answers out of thin air, the iPhone app gives you the benefit of multiple choice. Outside of that, however, the familiar mechanics, such as Red Light Challenges and Video Bonuses, are all there.

Coming in at $5 bucks, it’s a bit pricey – but considering how unlikely it is to find yourself in the Cash Cab amongst NYC’s endless sea of taxis, this might be the closest any of us get to the real thing. You can find it on the App Store here.

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