And the moment has finally come - HTC has announced its new line-up of Android devices - and they're good. 5 phones (3 product updates and 2 new ones with heavy Facebook integration), one 7" tablet. They even got Zuckerberg involved in the keynote! Apologies for the lack of diversity regarding the sources...

I'll be aiming for the Incredible S. Will post the full keynote when it goes up.

I've recently decided to shake things up a bit and go for a BlackBerry - behold the Bold 9780. I just wanted a second smartphone with a good physical keyboard, decent battery life (OK, I also wanted BBM) and a fairly long product life cycle (as opposed to the iPhone for example). Here are some first impressions:

• the new OS6 is quite decent - I don't know if it's a massive update, but it's quite fast
  
• the App World is very strange and quite limited (they have a lot of apps that cost more than £20 - slightly different app economy?)
• messaging-wise, it's a very good companion
• compared to the Torch, I think it's a much better choice
  

Will try to post a more detailed review, but I'll need to play around with it for far more than just a week... For now, I believe it fits in excellently alongside my Desire.

Microsoft announced today the range of 10 phones Windows Phone 7, the long-awaited update to the Windows mobile OS, will be launching on:

• 5 of them are, of course, built by leading WinMo device manufacturer HTC
• it seems to be completely different from WinMo 6.x - in a good way
• I find it particularly interesting that Microsoft has successfully managed to impose its hardware restrictions (3 main buttons, camera button, full GUI ownership, etc)
• there's a UI demo (first video in this post) from Waggener Edstrom that I find simply too clumsy for this level

Now let's see what happens, seeing Microsoft's tough and constantly evolving competition (Apple, Google, RIM)...

The Android mobile OS is quickly on the rise and that's a fact - but due to a combination of slightly flawed hardware and cocky developers, the Android Market (its application marketplace) is seriously being set back.

"A2SD" is an informal abbreviation for "apps to SD card", born out of some device manufacturers' peculiar decision to allocate very limited internal storage space to recent handsets. Until late Q2 2010, only manufacturers and the people behind the OS itself were to blame, as even though all Android handsets come with memory expansion slots, applications could only be installed to that very limited internal memory. Then Android 2.2 (Froyo) was released and its most significant upgrade addressed just that - it started allowing installations to the SD card.

There was only one slight catch - applications cannot be installed to the SD card by default - developers must opt in to allow their applications to be moved.

So when my HTC Desire got its update in no time (let's remember that it was the first device after Google's own Nexus One to receive that update), I instantly had a go at moving my apps over to the card. I couldn't. At first I thought it was a glitch, but quickly learned of the aforementioned rule - so I assumed it was a slight delay, that it would be just a matter of time until each developer updated their apps to allow this "A2SD". And I waited. And waited.

And then it hit me: you see, when you move an application to your SD card, you won't be able to access it (or have it run in the background) while your device is connected to a computer (be it in 'sync' or 'storage' mode). Some developers were honorable enough to leave that choice to users - so kudos to the likes of Foursquare, Flixster or ZXing Team (the people behind Barcode Scanner).

Most, however, seem to be too arrogant to do so and must somehow believe their apps are truly essential to any user - and to make matters worse, in many cases they also try to enforce obnoxious file sizes. A perfect example (and the catalyst for this hate post) is Skype for Android, which was launched earlier today. I tried to ignore the fact that until now they've been keeping Android users completely in the blue, making the app available only to a privileged few who just happened to be on a network that stuffed the company's pockets for some sort of exclusivity deal (while the iPhone app has been around for ages). Anyway, I install it - and it instantly eats up 14MB of internal storage space, with no option to move it over to that spacious SD card. I instantly removed it and gave it a one star rating on the Market, and won't consider reinstalling until they fix this - even though I do regularly use (paid) Skype Services.

Developers (big and small) are shooting themselves in the foot. Android learned from its mistakes and so did most manufacturers (most Q3-Q4 handsets now have much more generous storage space) - so why oh why am I still noticing apps with scores of desperate comments containing the words "a2sd please"?

Here's a good way to add an amusing twist to your reception-cursed device. You can actually buy it too. (via ImJustCreative)

Satnav designers are said to be getting hit quite hard by the introduction of Google Navigation - keeping in mind that the Google Maps based service is free to use, and that smartphones' market share is growing by the day, it may sound like they should have a reason to worry.

But the Google goodies aren't actually that free, especially when you're cruising through another country. So in their defence, the people over at Garmin did a little experiment of their own around France, relying on the fact that their devices all come with pre-installed maps (which don't need to be always downloaded, as opposed to Google's). Now, I'm a big Android fan, but from my point of view, they shouldn't really have anything to worry about, because:

• People are still genuinely scared of data roaming charges (I know I am). And you're bound to somehow always go over the top because if your smartphone is online, navigation isn't the only thing you will be using (you might as well also check your email, look something up on the web, etc).
• There's only a handful of European countries in which Google Navigation currently works, and besides that, Google Maps aren't always that accurate on the old continent.
• As a point of reference, in Q1 2010 smartphone sales accounted for about 19% of the total worldwide mobile phone sales. So for the remaining 81%, Google Navigation isn't even an option for now.
• Even if satnav devices will eventually fade out, it's still good business to sell platform-specific smartphone apps (which do work offline), as most manufacturers are already doing anyway.

A lot of people keep asking me whether the HTC Desire is actually worth getting. My answer is YES. Because Android is arguably the future of mobile platforms and the Desire is just the best Android phone out there (the HTC EVO doesn't count, it's not available in Europe).

For some reason, until now Mozilla has been quite shy in the mobile browsers segment (even though Firefox is among the leading browsers in the world). We kept hearing about Fennec, but now they have released a very early pre-alpha build for Android and I played with it a bit on my HTC Desire (they only tested it on the Motorola Droid and on the Nexus One) - here are some thoughts:

• a great UI: just as you would scroll all the way to the top of a page to see the URL bar in a regular browser, if you scroll all the way to the left you see your tabs and to the right you see the browser control buttons (bookmark page, back, forward, settings)
• add-on support: even this build has it, although I've had compatibility issues when trying to install one of them
• no multi-touch support (at least on the HTC Desire)
• it has that nice AutoComplete History feature we're used to on Firefox
• it also has the identity information feature
  
• it's pretty quick for an early version
• oddly enough, hitting the "Menu" button on the device doesn't bring up any kind of menu
• it comes preinstalled with an integrated Twitter search feature

That's about it - it's going to be interesting to see Fennec evolve as a mobile browser - do remember that right now, unlike PCs, mobile phones don't let you choose your default browser and use the preinstalled one to open any links from other applications.

I switched to Android about a year now - not that I condemn the iPhone in any way, I just see myself as more of a power user and Android fits that profile much better. So even though the Market still has a long way to go, I'm putting my growing pains of an early adopter aside and jotting down a few reasons for which I think it's the future:

• it's much more developer-friendly - none of that approval hassle
• it's customizable - smartphone designers can improve the OS (like HTC does with HTC Sense)
• it has had multi-tasking features from the very beginning
  
• it's growing like crazy and now there's a device for literally everyone
  
• Google is actively looking to port the big iPhone apps through its Android Advocacy Group and it's offering free phones to these developers
• it offers out-of-the-box syncing with your Google account - you can have all of your contacts, email and calendars downloaded from the cloud to your new phone in minutes - and there's also Google Talk
  
• there still are some cool Android-only apps, like Google Goggles as far as I know (plus others)
  

I had the opportunity of playing around with the Legend, HTC's new Android 2.1 smartphone with that gorgeous unibody design. Here are my thoughts on it:

• it has an overall amazing feel - it's just one of those phones that make you smile when you pull them out of your pocket
• it's sporting Android 2.1 - but with the new and improved HTC Sense experience, which makes everything a lot more pleasant (from overall contacts syncing to the fact that it goes silent when someone calls and you turn it face-down)
• very good battery life
• it's a big experience upgrade, even compared to the HTC Hero (which was named Phone of the Year 2009 by the GSMA and is overall a great phone)
• I'm looking to buy a phone and it's a close call between this one and the HTC Desire

Here's a nice presentation video: