Two million WP7 devices sold, USB tethering hack now available

According to Microsoft, there are more than two million Windows Phone 7 licenses sold around the world and 93% of those have found home with satisfied users. Meanwhile the unsatisfied may be interested in the recently released USB tethering hack. It's compatible with the HTC lineup and the Dell Venue Pro.

A day before Microsoft releases its Q4 financial results, it gives us a few interesting facts to chew on.

The most important one is about the Windows Phone 7 licenses sold globally - more than two million. This means there are more than two million WP7 phones worldwide and according to Microsoft 93% of them satisfy their owners. The research also shows 90% of the WP7 users would recommend the OS to others.

Another curious fact is that 100 apps (average) are published in the Windows Marketplace every day. Today there are more than 6500 apps available there.

If you are one of those unsatisfied users, or just want to expand the capabilities of your device, there is now a USB tethering hack that allows you to hook your phone to your computer and allows it to connect to the Internet via the 3G connection. It only works on HTC-made WP7 smartphones and you'll need to jailbreak the device first. You can find the full tutorial at XDA Developers thread or use this one.

If you own a Dell Venue Pro, the tethering magic is quite simple and easy. Just follow this link for thequick tutorial.

As we previously told you, Samsung Omnia 7 also supports USB tethering and it's very easy to enable it too.

Microsoft has a lot to catch up with the rest of the competing smartphone platforms. The first big update for Windows Phone 7 is just around the corner and we bet we'll see a lot of the aspects of the OS move in the right direction.

Not-blurry photos of Samsung Galaxy S 4G for T-Mobile appear

New photos of T-Mobile's Samsung Galaxy S 4G give us a better look at the phone - and you shouldn't be surprised to hear it looks almost exactly like the Vibrant. It's similar on the inside too, save for the faster mobile data connectivity and a couple of other goodies.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G is part of the Galaxy S line (the name really gives it away) but it uses an HSPA+ chipset capable of 21Mbps speeds. T-Mobile is calling it 4G, even though that's not technically true.

A video call camera graces the front of the Galaxy S 4G, which was omitted from the Samsung Vibrant. The regular I9000 Galaxy S does have a secondary camera though.

    
Spy shots of T-Mobile's Samsung Galaxy S 4G

Anyway, another noticeable change seems to be the color of the back - it looks matte brown instead of piano black with a blue dots "galactic" pattern. This may be the fastest way to tell the Galaxy S 4G and the Vibrant apart.

The rest of the insides are unchanged from the mainline Galaxy S. Still, the Galaxy S 4G in the photos reportedly ran Android 2.2 Froyo, which may be the OS version at launch. The launch is slated for 23 February according to leaked slides. The first official announcement was vague at best.

 
The Samsung Galaxy S 4G is expected to launch on 23 February, running Froyo

T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4G is exclusive to T-Mobile USA.

Motorola sums Q4 and 2010, things are starting to look good

Motorola has just published its Q4 and full 2010 results and they suggest the worst might already be behind the company. he company has sold mobile phones worth $2.4 billion and generated $72 million of net profit. Those numbers compare very favorably to the $1.8 billion revenue and $132 of loss that the company scored in the last quarter of 2009.

The good holiday quarter results have also helped reduce the loss for the full 2010 down to "only" $86 million. We'll remind you that in 2009 the mobile division of Motorola (which is now a separate company) lost over $1.3 billion so we're definitely looking at an improvement here.

In Q4 of 2010 Motorola shipped 11.3 million handsets (including 4.9 million smartphones) bringing the full 2010 tally to 37.3 million. In Q4 of 2009 Motorola only shipped 2 million smartphones so the company's obviously achieved some serious growth there.

Of course, one would expect such growth, considering that the company launched 23 Android-running smartphones in the past year alone. They are now expecting to fortify their position as one of the leading Android manufacturers with handsets such as the Tegra 2-powered Motorola Atrix, the CDMA-lovingDroid Bionic and the Xoom Honeycomb tablet.

The Motorola CEO used the occasion to reveal the target release dates of some of the company's new handsets. The AT&T-bound Atrix and the Verizon-heading 3G Xoom should come at the end of February, while the Bionic and the LTE-enabled version of the Xoom should arrive by the end of June.

For Q1 of 2011 Motorola expects lower sales and a net loss of $26 to $62 million.

Secret Loophole Allows Unlimited Data For AT&T iPhone Users

In an unadvertised loophole, AT&T has allowed some of its subscribers who have had unlimited data plans in the past to switch back.
The loophole includes anyone who owned an iPhone before June, when the limited plans took effect.
The Associated Press (AP) learned of the loophole through some of AT&T’s iPhone subscribers.
Jose Argumedo, of Brentwood, NY, told AP's Peter Svensson that he and a friend were switched back to an unlimited plan recently after they called AT&T’s customer service. Both users own an iPhone 4, and previously owned earlier iPhone models.


Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, would not confirm the option. “We handle customers and their situations individually, and we're not going to discuss specifics,” he told Svensson.
AT&T has allowed iPhone and smartphone users with unlimited data plans to keep them when upgrading directly to a new phone. It’s the option to return to an unlimited plan after going limited that has been kept secret.
AT&T’s unlimited plan costs $30 per month. There are two limited plans -- one for $15 per month that provides 200mb of data, and another that provides 2gb for $25 per month. Above the 2gb limit, each additional gigabyte of data costs $10.
Two gigabytes of data per month is more than enough for most people.
Argumedo said he uses between 4 and 8gb per month, because he uses video and audio streaming services such as Pandora. He told Svensson that AT&T restored the unlimited plan after he threatened to go to Verizon.

2 Million Windows Phone 7 Units Sold

Microsoft reported this week that it has sold more than 2 million units of its newest Windows Phone 7 software to smartphone makers last quarter, a strong showing for the software launched in October, but still lagging behind Apple Inc’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system.
Microsoft, which licenses the technology to companies such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and HTC Corp, also said there were more than 6,500 apps available for download on its online marketplace.


The numbers show pretty good momentum on the sales of the platform,” Al Hilwa, an analyst at tech research firm IDC, told Reuters.
“Anecdotally almost everyone who has seen the phone has commented on the style and fluidity of the interface. The apps numbers are excellent for this early stage of the lifecycle,” Hilwa said.
Despite its strong start, the software giant still lags behind its rivals.
Apple said last week it has unloaded 16.2 million units of its iPhones last quarter. Research in Motion (RIM) in December said it sold 14.2 million units of its BlackBerry smartphone during that quarter, which ended November 27.
Google, which offers its Android system to phone makers for free, said 300,000 Android devices are sold daily, which suggests more than 9 million are sold each month.

UN Reports 2 Billion Net Users Globally

Worldwide Internet usage has ballooned reaching an impressive 2 billion users, the UN telecommunications agency’s head said on Wednesday.
The number of mobile phone subscriptions has also reached a symbolic threshold -- five billion, Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU), told AFP.
“At the beginning of the year 2000 there were only 500 million mobile subscriptions globally and 250 million Internet users,” Toure said.
“By the beginning of this year 2011 those numbers have mushroomed to over five billion mobile users and two billion subscribers to the Internet,” he added.
A statistician at ITU told the French news agency that the figure for mobile phones related to subscriptions and not individual users.


New data posted online by ITU showed that the estimated number of Internet users had reached 2.08 billion by the end of 2010, compared to 1.86 billion by the end of 2009.
The estimated of global mobile phone subscriptions reached 5.28 billion in 2010, compared to 4.66 billion a year earlier.
“The very high growth in mobile (phones) is slowing and we're reaching the end of double digit growth in mobile,” Susan Teltscher, ITU head of market information and statistics, told AFP.
As for the Internet, nearly 1 in three people in the world use it. Fifty-seven percent of those users are in developing countries.
The number of fixed broadband Internet subscriptions worldwide passed the 500 million mark for the first time in 2010, reaching 555 million, while the number of mobile broadband subscriptions reached 940 million.
Asia and the Pacific added more than 100 million Internet users to the global total to bring the number of users in that region to 857 million -- largely due to China, Teltscher said.
But the highest density of online surfers is found in Europe, followed by the Americas, former Soviet states and Arab nations, according to the ITU data. The most rapid online growth in recent years has occurred in the latter two regions.
The estimated number of Internet users in Arab states has reached 88 million, doubling in just four years. The Commonwealth of Independent States grew even faster -- 127 million people online last year, compare to 51 million in 2007, according to ITU estimates.
“They have been catching up because they had lower penetration rates before,” said Teltscher.

Application Revenue Expected To Triple This Year

Research firm Gartner said on Wednesday that worldwide mobile application revenue will almost triple to $15.1 billion this year.
Apple created the market for mobile online software stores with the iPhone store in mid-2008, scoring an instant hit that drove smartphones sales and reshaped the way mobile content is delivered.
"We estimate that Apple's App Store drove close to nine application downloads out of 10 in 2010 and will remain the single best-selling store ... through 2014, although to a lesser extent, as other stores manage to gain momentum," analyst Carolina Milanesi told Reuters.


Apple's App Store reached 10 billion downloads last week, and its rival Google Android reached 1 billion downloads last June.
Android was expected to become the world's most popular smartphone operating system this year as vendors like HTC, Motorola Mobility and Samsung Electronics roll out new models.
According to Gartner, 81 percent of all downloads this year will be made for free.
The research firm said that 16 percent of application store markets' $5.2 billion revenue was generated from advertising, a share it expected to nearly double to 30 percent by the end of 2014.

XBox Game To Help Combat PTSD

A therapeutic game has been developed by US Army doctors for soldiers suffering from combat related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The therapeutic game, called Virtual Iraq or Virtual Afghanistan, was developed from the Xbox game Full Spectrum Warrior, a combat tactical simulation game.
The games use images delivered via a head-mounted display panel to plunge soldiers back into combat zones in Iraq or Afghanistan to recreate the traumatic experiences they had while at war, the project’s lead researcher Albert Rizzo said Tuesday to AFP.
“At first blush, it seems counter-intuitive: why would you make somebody go through an approach where one of your goals is to make the patient feel a little bit anxious as they revisit their traumatic experiences?” the University of Southern California professor told reporters.
Researchers have found that by progressively raising a patient’s feelings of anxiety up to a moderate level while simultaneously encouraging the patient to mentally process and talk about their traumatic experience, they can bring down anxiety levels and decrease PTSD symptoms.


Creators of the Virtual PTSD Experience at the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, or T2, hope the program will cut down on stigma associated with the “signature wounds” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
“I have seen too many warriors who come home from a deployment and silently suffer for years before they get help,” said Greg Reger, a clinical psychologist and acting chief of T2’s Innovative Technology Applications Division, to AFP.
Once logged in to the Virtual PTSD Experience, service members will encounter a visitor’s center on “Psychological Health Island,” which will lead them through the three sections of the program: causes, symptoms, and next steps. Throughout the virtual experience, users can click on brochure links that will take them to informational web sites, connect them with mental-health facilities to schedule an appointment or lead them through relaxation exercises.
Those manifestations include recurring nightmares and flashbacks, emotional numbing, avoidance of places that stir memories and hyper-vigilance. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of soldiers who have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan come home with the mental disorder, according to US military estimates.
Three randomized control trials of the virtual reality therapy games are currently underway. In one study, 16 of 20 soldiers who were treated with the simulator game developed by Rizzo and others at USC’s Institute for Creative Technology no longer met PTSD criteria at the end of therapy.

Conficker Worm Neutralized, Not Eliminated

A team of cybersecurity experts were able to prevent the Conficker computer worm from activating, but the malware program remains on millions of computers worldwide, according to a document released on Monday.
The Conficker Working Group (CWG), a task force featuring representatives from AOL, Facebook, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, VeriSign, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), was forced in late 2008 to combat the self-replicating virus.
The Conficker worm allowed cybercriminals to seize control of computers for an unknown purpose, though according to Glenn Chapman of AFP, the goal might have been "to steal valuable data or use machines to fire off spam or launch attacks on websites or other online targets."
Their "Lessons Learned" report, which is currently available as a PDF document on the coalition's website, was commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security in 2009.


According to the CWG, the document was intended to "serve as a permanent record of the events surrounding the creation and operation of the working group so that it could be used as an exemplar upon which similar groups in the future could build."
In that report, the organization confirms that they were able to neutralize the worm by preventing it from being updated or communicating with its creator, whose identity has never been discovered. However, they add that Conficker remains dormant on between four to 15 million computers across the globe, according to various media reports published throughout the week.
According to Keith Johnson of the Wall Street Journal, "The Conficker worm, which first appeared late in 2008, disables a computer's security measures, including Windows software updates and antivirus protection, leaving machines vulnerable to more malicious software."
Conficker was "among the largest botnets in the past five years," the working group said in their report, and while their efforts to neutralize the malware proved successful, they considered their "inability to remediate infected computers and eliminate the threat of the botnet" their biggest failure, according to Chapman's article on Wednesday.
"Experts have disagreed about the threat posed by Conficker, with some arguing that the worm was perceived as more of a danger than it turned out to be," Lance Whitney of CNET.com wrote on Tuesday. "The CWG said it believes that its own efforts helped stop the spread of Conficker but admits that the worm's author didn't seem to try his or her hardest."

Honeycomb Android 3.0 screenshots

iPad was the first device which gave the concept of completely different OS for the tablet rather than running windows of any other OS on them. So , currently Android tablets has Android 2.2 or Android 2.3 in it which are actually designed to the Android smartphones. So , if you don’t know Honey Android 3.0 will come soon and it is specially designed for the tablet devices.
Well we don’t know much about Honeycomb, but today AndroidCentral has shared some screenshots of Honeycomb which reveals the user interface and many other stuff of the upcoming Android 3.0 OS.These Screenshots show the culmination of wandering through the Android 3.0 SDK preview.Things could change till its final release but it would definitely be more like this.



You can checkout all the screen shots from here.

This holiday season was not that happy for Nokia, nor was the year

Nokia has had a tough 2010, which proved worse than even the recession-bound 2009. The phones volumes and their prices have fallen but Nokia estimates it has taken the lead in the QWERTY phone market.

In Q4 2010 Nokia shipped a total of 123.7 million devices, 28.3 million of which were smartphones. The number of smartphones alone grew by over a third compared to an year ago, but their Average Selling Price (ASP) fell by 17% down to €156. The ASP for feature phones however rose to €43 (as compared to €40 in Q4 2009).

Correspondingly, the operating margin of the handsets and services went down to 7% versus 14.9% for Q4 of 2009.

Despite those developments, Nokia scored a 5% YoY improvement in net sales with a total of €12,651 million for Q4 2010. Still, Q4 2010 saw the Handsets&Services operating profit fall by 23% YoY.

Overall Nokia maintains some strong positions in Europe (where most of the devices were shipped). North America still remains a hard market for the Finnish company to crack.

Shortages of certain components during Q4 of 2010 had adverse effects on device volumes and are expected to continue throughout Q1 of 2011. Nokia is expecting net sales of 6.8 to 7.3 billion euro in Q1 of 2011.

Estimates put Nokia's global market share at 32% for the whole 2010 (in 2009 that number was 34%). The device value market share also shrunk. 2010 as a whole marked a 5% increase in sales compared to 2009, but operating profit fell 0.5%, with operating margin going from 11.9% down to 11.3%.

Sales of the Nokia C3 were strong and Nokia estimates it's ahead of the competition in market share for QWERTY-equipped devices.

Stephen Elop, Nokia's new CEO, called the Q4 performance "solid" but cautions that there are significant challenges ahead. "In short, the industry changed, and now it's time for Nokia to change faster" says Elop.

There sure were some behind-the-scenes changes in Q4 - Nokia sold off its wireless modem business for €147 million and the Symbian Foundation was put under Nokia control after the other members left.

Ovi Store is growing, enjoying 4 million downloads a day (compared to 2.7 million a day in October 2010), and Ovi Maps is expanding as well. Ovi Music on the other hand suffered a partial blow.

Full details about Nokia's Q4 performance is available in the full press release.

The PlayStation Suite: PS1 games and a game store for all Androids

Sony's plan for mobile PlayStation gaming goes much further than just the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play - the newly announced PlayStation Suite platform will deliver PlayStation games on a variety of Android-based devices and plans include a dedicated game store too.

To kick-start the whole thing, Sony will be launching a PlayStation One emulator (not a PSP emulator asoriginally thought), which will allow Android devices to play games for the original PS console. Original titles will be developed too - the first should come out as early as this year.

 
Sony announcing the PlayStation Suite at an event in Tokyo

Third-party developers will get to use of Sony's game development environment, which will ensure that a game will work on the whole range of devices - Android smartphones and tablets (Android 2.3+ is required though) and also the next generation PSP 2.

For devices that don't have the necessary hardware game controls (like the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Playdoes), the development environment will provide touchscreen controls instead.

 
Touchscreen controls for devices without hardware game controls

A PlayStation Store will open too, allowing game purchases right from the device. There's no info on the expected game prices though. Third-party manufacturers can get their devices PlayStation Certified, which is Sony's way of ensuring a quality experience.

There's no official list of compatible devices - one can imagine the XPERIA Play and Arc will be on it, but devices without PlayStation Certified credentials may be excluded from the game galore.

SE Xperia Play prototype gets a thorough review, again

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last month, you know that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play prototype previews first appeared in a couple of Chinese websites. But here's a more Western-type preview of the device, courtesy of Engadget.com.

There’s not much news as we knew almost everything about the device. The earlier Chinese previews were pretty thorough. The Xperia Play, or the PlayStation phone as it is commonly dubbed, rocks the latest version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread running on a muscular 1Ghz Qualcomm MSM8655 chipset. And let’s not forget the gorgeous 4” LCD screen relying on a Bravia engine for various imaging and video enhancements.

  

Few user interface improvements over the stock Android experience have been added here and there. For example, just like on the Xperia Arc, the Xperia Play let’s you pinch anywhere on the homescreen, which will group all the widgets in one screen, clicking on a widgets would take you to its homescreen.

  

Also, when tested, the prototype’s 5MP snapper at the back of the device only recorded WVGA videos, which corroborates with the earlier previews. We really hope that Sony Ericsson will allow for 720p recording in the final product.

The reviewer tried a couple of unofficially emulated games from the original PlayStation and GameBoy Advance and reportedly everything worked fine - from the performance down to the assigning of the extended hardware gaming controls (except for the touchpads). We bet the experience with the original PSP emulator will be superior.

The reviewer then summoned the expertise of an experienced gamer and he reports that the XPERIA Play is not balanced as well as the PSP Go with the top being heavier than the lower part. Also he found the shoulder buttons being a wee bit thinner than he'd like (the PSP Go is substantially thicker than the XPERIA Play).

Sony Ericsson is expected to announce the XPERIA PLAY at the MWC 2011 in February. Still, you didn't mind looking at some fresh photos of the Xperia Play now, did you?

Galaxy S Giorgio Armani hits UK, XPERIA Arc gathers pre-orders

The Froyo-powered and fashion-dressed worldwide version of the Samsung Captivate - the Galaxy S Giorgio Armani - has just hit the UK and is available for free on a contract. Meanwhile the XPERIA Arc is available on pre-order for £460. Ouch!

The Samsung I9010 Galaxy S Giorgio Armani is the worldwide version of the AT&T exclusive Galaxy S phone - the Captivate. The most attractive things about the GA-branded Galaxy S (besides its logo) are the matt plastic, the metallic battery cover and the Android v2.2 Froyo running inside out of the box. We already reviewed the Galaxy S GA.. It's enough to say, it's our dream Galaxy S phone.

Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange in the UK are already offering the Galaxy S Giorgio Armani on quite attractive contracts. You can have one for free on a two-year contract and £46 tariff. 

In other news the Gingerbread-running Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc is already available on pre-order atPlay.com. It's priced at £460 and is scheduled for 1 April launch. Of course both the price and release date may (and will) change in the future. Let's hope the retail price drops to a more reasonable level.