Anything that holds the title of being ‘First Ever‘ in any regard is bound to gain attention. And here’s another First Ever stuff about ‘Android’. Very soon, probably by June 2010, you might get to see a Android based ebook Reader and the companies working on the first ever Android powered ebook reader are Netronix(a Taiwanese networking enterprise) along with Texas Instruments.

“This Android powered e-book reader will interoperate with other Android smartphones /Netbooks” said Arthur Lu,chairman, Netronix. Now, this statement can make a great impact as it means that the in-progress ebook reader will be able to share files with Android machines(smartphones and netbooks).

There was also a slight hint over the e-reader to behave like a PDA, meaning that the wireless data connectivity may well be used for SMS, emails and may be phone calls rather than just being an ebook reader.

This reminds us of Apple Tablet or may be CrunchPad. Those devices (although not in production so far) were very much aimed at browsing web on the go and possibly support voice services as well. Tablet machines are probably the most suitable candidates to function as ebook reader as well simply because of the ideal shape and size.

Now, if we get to have an Android tablet  by mid of next year that lets us browse the web(as good as laptop), read ebooks (as good as kindle) and lets us make voice calls then it’s the best combo one can think of. Being Android as the Mobile OS will help cutting expenses for sure.

Although there are only hints but no conformity over the assumptions made above, things can turn either way for the first ever Android powered ebook Reader. Stay tuned for more updates on this.

The growing interest of mobile application developers towards Android platform isn’t stopping at all. Finally, the popular Mobile VOIP Application, Fring, has become available for Android Devices including the latest rage, Motorola Droid.

Just explore Fring in Android Market or just head over to their website and downlaod the version of Fring that’s customized for your mobile. Fring helps you make VOIP calls over internet data plan or WiFi through any of the popular IM clients such as Skype, GTalk, MSN, Yahoo! and many others.

It is just the beginning of the drift of the third party developer community towards Android platform because of its openness and future growth prospects compared to firewalled iPhone OS and its App Store.

This version of Fring comes with an integration with Twitter as well. If you’ve got an android phone, go check it out !

It’s no news that Motorola Droid is making the waves all over and Droid is selling like hot cakes in US & will soon hit 1 million mark in direct sales, even before it gets available in europe and asian markets.  But it’s good to see that Motorola isn’t so overwhelmed with the successful take-off in Android space and already working on its next Android phone called “Motus“.

The rumor mill has spilled out technical specs of Motorola Motus and it seems that it will not more superior and feature-rich than Droid. Here are the specs…

• Quad-band GSM/EDGE/GPRS (same as every smartphone of today)
• 7.2Mbps HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100MHz) (no surprises here as well !)
• QWERTY Physical keyboard (probably similar to Droid)
• 5 MP camera with Autofocus(similar to Droid) and LED flash (high-quality photography lovers would love this!)
• 256MB of RAM (Should have been more than this)
• GPS, Wi-Fi (obvious)
• 3.1″ capacitive 480×320 display (Large capacitive touchscreen is addictive and this one is lot bigger than usual)
• Bluetooth 2.0 support , MicroSD slot (obvious)
• Weight: 133 gms (lightweight phone)
• 1400 mAh battery (heavy duty battery)
• Qualcomm MSM 7201A CPU (just OK, nothing special about it)
• MOTOBLUR (nice ‘motorola only’ UI enhancer, lovable)

There is no info on the pricing but expect it to be dirt cheap with a data plan contract. The chances are that this phone will go in favor of AT&T network as AT&T is probably the only mobile carrier that’s not having an android phone in its kitty. Rumor mill is favoring this as well.

We will follow up with more specs.

Indians can finally grab some cool android mobile devices coming their way at an affordable price. After HTC Magic, HTC is coming up with another android phone, which is undoubtedly a better option to opt for. HTC Tattoo , a feature packed phone from HTC is scheduled to get released in India very soon. HTC Tattoo was available to US and Europe so far and now, its India which would be getting this phone. As 3G services are virtually absent in India, expecting a bundled offering is unfeasible for HTC Tattoo.

In case you buy HTC Tattoo with Vodafone, you will get a 20MB of data usage for three months, free of charges. To be honest, 20MB is like a drop in the sea for an average internet user but still, something is better than nothing.

Still, the pricing of this phone has been kept quite affordable, around Rs.17,000($370) which makes it much lucrative option for niche but growing smartphone fanatics in India. Anyways, here are some of those features that are most probable to grab attention in nascent Indian smartphone industry. Take a look !

• 2.8 inches touchscreen with 240×320 QVGA resolution
• In-built GPS
• Bluetooth, Wi-Fi support
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• 3.2 MP camera
• Video format support : MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media® Video 9
• G-sensor
• Digital Compass

Android as a Mobile platform is starting to grow big but India has not seen most of Android phone launches yet. Its a positive sign that HTC is bringing yet another phone in India and this time, the pricing is quite cheaper. HTC was the one brand that took the things off for Android in US and it seems that India will also see first few android phones from HTC only.

While the blogosphere was busy writing reviews about the Motorola Droid, the common problem pointed out by most of the product reviewers/early buyers was the Camera Auto-focus issue. Droid’s 5MP camera was unable to auto-focus while capturing photos, making it quite a difficult task for clicking a clear picture from the inbuilt camera.

It was quite a shame for a 5MP camera(Droid) to perform poorer than a 3.2 MP camera(iPhone) but suddenly things got in place by itself and every guy who was complaining about the auto-focus issue in droid was happy to see everything fixed.

At the backstage, the problem had been identified by Motorola and Google and it was decided to update the Droid’s software with required bug fixes on Dec 11, 2009. It was actually a pleasant surprise for even Google and Motorola to see the problem disappearing by itself but the real cause behind this sudden bug removal was the nature of bug.

A guy from Google’s Android team has confirmed that there’s a date-related bug in the Droid’s camera software that leads to it having cycles of good and bad focus that depend on the date. The thing is that the good cycle had started recently and everything went fine by itself. As told by the one of the Android’s staff member, this good cycle will last till Dec 17 and the permanent bug fix will be provided via Over the Air(OTA) software upgrade before the good cycle ends.

Samsung has brought down another android phone in the smartphone arena, Galaxy Spica, an advanced variant of the earlier launched Samsung Galaxy which we’ve covered. This Samsung phone features a 3.2-inch (320x480px) capacitive touchscreen and a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus feature, along with a speedy 800MHz processor (faster and powerful than the 528MHz processor).

Galaxy Spica boasts a slim 0.51-inch design, has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and can go up to 32GB of data via the built-in microSD card slot. Galaxy Spica is certainly the first Android phone to support DivX format movies, which makes it a lovable phone for movie fanatics.

What Galaxy Spica misses out is the Android 2.0 OS version and Google navigation software. Both these features are the main alluring factors in the latest rage, Motorola Droid and this makes it an unhealthy offering by Samsung to Android fans.

The phone has got released in Europe only. There hasn’t been any announement about its release in U.S and its pricing as well but its most probable that this phone will not clinche high sales figures in U.S. as it’s a poor option compared to the already available Droid in U.S.

It seems that Android phones will soon forget competing with iPhone and symbian phones and the competition within the Android community will rather go fierce. Anyways, Android as an Open source Mobile OS community will keep evolving and advancing further.

We’re all hearing about Android every now and then. Most recently, the hype has been building around Droid, the latest entrant in Android smartphone batallion and there have been enough discussions about its hard-to-beat features and iPhone rivalry on the web already. It does almost everything that a Mobile PC can be expected to do, probably more than that and the smartphone is cashing on its abilities as well. On the weekend when Droid launched, almost 1,00,000 units were sold to its enthusiastic buyers.

But the biggest difference between iPhone and Droid doesn’t really lie in the hardware capabilities or OS features but the hugely piled up App Store compared to poor Android Market. We all know that Android Market boasts over 10k android apps but App Store wins hands down, both quantitatively and qualitatively when it comes to Apps.

One important thing noticed by Eric about Android App Market is its weak, rather pathetic presence on desktop. Just check out Android Market’s website and you will realize that there has hardly been any emphasis of Google on Android Market.

The website looks lame as it features some paid, featured and unpaid apps and that’s it. There is hardly any screenshot of the displayed apps and no way to buy them from the website. Now, you might think that who actually buys from the desktop, right? It’s understandable that over 90% of the apps are bought from the iPhone/Android phone itself but the problem is that most of the users pay attention to Android Market online before buying an android phone or app from Android Market through Phone

Also, as suggested by Eric, if Google actually makes arrangement for a Cloud based Push through solution, wherein users would browse through apps in Android Market on the desktop itself, make a purchase right there and the purchased app download would be provided on the phone then Android Market can compete a lot better with App Store.

We can just hope that Google takes this suggestion into its immediate action plan and get their desktop based android market transform into something useful and appealing.

The latest news from the Android World is that Google has acquired Mobile AD Platform, ADMob for a whopping $750Mn. We must admit that we’re surprised by this acquisition, not because of ADMob’s acquisition but the price at which it has been acquired by Google.

AdMob was already a known name in mobile advertising industry, mainly on the iPhone platform within applications and now, Google has bought this Mobile Advertising startup mainly because Google has its own Mobile OS, Android competing against iPhone platform.

This would make Apple more dependent on Google as iPhone has been making hefty profits from mobile advertising solution, served by AdMob and Android will certainly be AdMob’s first priority for obvious reasons.

One of the main reasons why Google acquired AdMob at such a high valuation might be the growing competition with Apple in Mobile industry landscape. Sooner or later, AdMob’s acquisition was certain, by either Apple or Google. But Google closed the deal quite swiftly, leaving no chance for Apple to become the third angle in the acquisition deal.

Google has been a pioneer in internet advertising space and now, after acquiring AdMob, it has got an unbeatable lead in Mobile Advertising space as well. Here’s how Google explains graphically what AdMob specialises into.

Now, its going to be a bigger challenge for iPhone to have a face-off with Android, as things have started favoring Android in many regards…Best of Luck, Apple !

The web is currently abuzzed with Droid,the real iPhone killer and we must say, Motorola, Verizon and Google are leaving no stone unturned in letting everyone feel excited about their new smartphone. The unified efforts of the three tech biggies can be seen in the Droid’s product quality and promotions, currently hitting U.S. audience in a massive way.

Very soon, most of the U.S. television shows will start airing latest Droid commercial, which is pure Killer stuff. If you were already waiting for Droid, this commercial will fire up your hunger to own this “iPhone Killer”. Anyways, the commercial is definitely a visual treat to cherish.

Play it right now ! (If you’re at office and can’t play with sound, go home and watch it in full sound one more time)

It seems that the ‘iPhone cult’ is about to halt anyway. Everyone is talking Droid nowadays. The latest phone from Motorola that’s about to hit the market within a week from now(Nov 6), also happens to be the first android phone on Verizon Wireless, the largest 3G wireless service provider. So, when three industry heavyweights, namely Motorola(Hardware), Verizon Wireless(3G Network) and Google(Mobile OS, Android 2.0) come together, the outcome has to be something spectacular. And it is…Droid is truly spectacular !

With amazing hardware capabilities and next generation Mobile operating system (Android 2.0), this  smartphone was already making the news almost everyday during last couple of weeks. It was yesterday when the official site Droiddoes.com revealed the curtains and announced the feature specifications, pricing details and date of official launch of Motorola Droid. It will cost a sum of $199 with a 2 yr contract with Verizon Wireless in US.

The odds are against Apple at the moment. The recent fuss over Google Voice iPhone app rejection and FCC’s involvement into the matter painted a patchy image of Apple in front of the world. AT&T 3G network has already failed to handle the network overload caused by millions of iPhones, leaving iPhone buyers in a miserable state and now utility Google apps (Google Voice and the latest one is Google Maps Navigation) is no more for iPhone as well. Every prospective smartphone buyer was looking for a superior alternative to iPhone. Coming January, the 2 year AT&T contract bundled with iPhone will start clearing up and the market perception is already going strong towards choosing an Android phone (Droid seems ideal) over iPhone.

Look at the coolest stuff that Droid brings along, if you’re still unaware about it.

The battalion of android phones is already making iPhone look pale and now Droid has not left even a single reason for iPhone fanbois to cheer for.

By the way, it is unclear if Motorola Droid will be launched in India or not We will track that too.

We will have you regularly updated with happenings with Droid…Keep checking !