The Vodafone UK forum is alight with posts from angry owners of the HTC Desire who feel they have been duped with the latest firmware update for their handsets.

While most were expecting the firmware update that landed this morning to be Froyo – Google’s latest OS – it turns out the update was something called 2.1-update1 which commenters are calling a “branding update”.

We gave you news earlier this week that Vodafone is bringing Froyo to Desire “as soon as possible”, with the phone company explaining: “We are working with HTC and Google to push the new 2.2 Android firmware out to Vodafone HTC Desire customers as soon as possible.

“We’ll update customers when we have a confirmed release date.”

Unfortunately, customers were told today that a new firmware update was on the cards, raising expectations only for them to get smacked down.

The new update actually brings the Vodafone 360 service to the Desire, which consists of the following apps: Music Shop, Shop and Web.

The web homepage of the Desire has also been changed to a Vodafone one.

Update woe

As a result of this, the official Vodafone forum is now filled with unhappy customers, one of which contacted TechRadar about the situation.

We got on the phone to Vodafone to see what the situation was and a spokesperson for the company told us: “We would like to reassure customers that the Froyo 2.2 update is on its way.

“When we announced the HTC Desire we said that the device would be pre-loaded with 360 services.

“Unfortunately, there was a delay in bringing these services to the Desire so that is what the latest over-the-air update brings.”

While you can’t blame Vodafone for updating its Desire handsets to bring 360 functionality, the timing of the update is a rather cruel one for customers waiting (im)patiently for Google’s latest Android update – an update which has already been released to unlocked versions of the HTC Desire.

Read more: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/vodafone-users-angry-at-htc-desire-360-update-707461#ixzz0xhijAAGI

source by By Marc Chacksfield

The UK mobile handset industry has recorded three months of consecutive growth for the first time in two years, figures from GfK reveal.

The market grew by 6.8% in June this year, while in May it grew by 6.5% and in April by 1.9%

The growth was fuelled by a boom in prepay sales which grew for the first time since March this year. Before March 2010, prepay sales had declined for four consecutive months, while contract sales had grown during the same period.

GfK said that the growth had come from success in the contract market and the demand for smartphones.

The combined growth of contract and pay-as-you-go sales, boosted by below the line promotions, has led to the market’s recovery, GfK added.

However, despite a quarter of success, the future of the market is still not certain. GfK said: ‘Highly anticipated new product launches look set to continue to drive the contract market into growth, but the prepay market may fall back into decline without sustained promotional activity.

‘In addition, the looming spectre of the contract lull caused by the mass shift from 18 to 24-month tariffs in 2008 may well see the total market slip back into negative growth later in the year.’

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We brought you news earlier this month that the Motorola Milestone will be getting an upgrade to Android 2.2 and this information has now been confirmed by Motorola.

In a post on their owners forum Motorola stated that the 2.2 update for the Milestone will begin rolling out in the 4th Quarter of 2010.

The Motorola Milestone will be enhanced by Android 2.2 which will enable full flash support, the ability to use your mobile as a personal Wi-Fi hotspot and the possibility to install applications on your microSD card.

Some bad news that accompanies the post is that neither the Motorola Backflip or the Dext will be receiving any further updates, or at least that’s how it looks from the post. Neither phone has achieved great sales in the UK, but even so we feel it’s rather unfair to discontinue support.

source: Simon D Thomas

Vodafone today announces that it will bring KIN, a new Windows Phone designed specifically for people who are actively navigating their social lives, exclusively to Europe in Autumn 2010. Initial launch markets will be Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, with further markets to follow before the end of 2010.

KIN is designed to be the ultimate social experience that blends the phone, online services and a browser based experience for viewing photos, videos, contacts and feeds from any computer. Features like the KIN Spot, Loop and Studio harness the power of social media to let people publish and share everything they love, with everyone they love.

“Vodafone is delighted to further its partnership with Microsoft, bringing our customers Microsoft’s latest innovation – KIN,” said Patrick Chomet, Group Director of Terminals at Vodafone. “Mobile social networking is increasingly having strong appeal for our customers. KIN has a unique and intuitive way of engaging with the user, enabling them easily to share experiences and stay in touch with their friends.

“Our aim is to provide our customers with the widest choice of attractive smartphones and the best-in-class experience of new services through Vodafone’s high-speed mobile broadband network. This announcement continues to deliver on our ambition to be the strongest provider of data-centric mobile experiences across platforms and operating systems,” Chomet concluded.

“The new KIN phone brings together everything important to socially-connected people in a way that is completely natural for them,” said Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment and Devices division at Microsoft. “KIN phones, together with Vodafone’s outstanding coverage, will provide people in Europe with a great social experience on a mobile device.”

Pricing information and local availability dates will be announced by the markets closer to the date of launch.

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Vodafone today announced the launch of its new Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certified Mobile Wi-Fi device, the R201. The first of its kind, the R201 enables five Wi-Fi enabled devices to simultaneously share digital content which a customer has stored on the device, and access the internet via a Vodafone Mobile Broadband connection.

The R201 comes with embedded DLNA software, allowing Vodafone customers to view their digital content, such as music, video and photos, across all DLNA compatible devices, including laptops, netbooks, mobile phones, gaming devices, TVs and radios.

DLNA is a standard used to enable the sharing of digital media between different consumer electronic devices. For example, a DLNA compliant TV can interoperate with a DLNA compliant PC to play music, photos or videos. The specification also includes Digital Rights Management (DRM), to ensure that content is protected from unauthorised copying and use.

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CUPERTINO, California — June 28th, 2010 — Apple today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone 4 through Saturday, June 26th, just three days after its launch on June 24th. The new iPhone 4 features FaceTime, which makes video calling as easy as one tap, and Apple’s new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in stunning text, images and video.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologise to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply”.

iPhone 4 also features a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, HD 720p video recording, Apple’s A4 processor, a 3-axis gyro and up to 40 percent longer talk time — in a beautiful all-new design of glass and stainless steel that is the thinnest smartphone in the world.

iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, the newest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which features Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, deeper Enterprise support and Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform.

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You’ve read our iPhone 4 review in which we declared Apple’s new smartphone one of the all-time gadget greats, but what of the killer new app for the fourth generation device; the iMovie video editing software?

The new application, available from the App Store for an austerity budget-friendly £2.99, means iPhone users are now able create full video projects complete with pristinely trimmed clips, transitions, themes, subtitles and even a spot of music.

iMovie has long been a stable of Mac OS X, a basic package, suitable for beginners and those just seeking to add a little structure to their home movies. It has never claimed to match the functionality of pro suites like Apple’s Final Cut and Adobe’s Premiere, but many folks who have now mastered those programs, cut their teeth on iMovie.

iMovie for iPhone 4 video review:

With the Apple iPhone now boasting brilliant quality HD video capture at 720p with decent sound recording, there’s never been a better time to bring a video editing package to the device, and the mobile incarnation of iMovie (indeed the first decent video software we’ve ever seen on a phone) is an absolute belter.

As you’d expect, camera functionality is built-in to the app meaning you can record movies and drop them directly into the touchscreen timeline as well as import pre-recorded movies and photos into your project to create an animated slideshow.

The touchscreen interface is a perfect reproduction of the desktop version and whizzing through screens and adding in effects is ridiculously slick (thanks to the speedy A4 processor) and intutive. Just a simple click on a piece of footgae brings up the video trimming bars (first seen on the iPhone 3GS), which allow you to tailor your clip to the perfect length with great ease.

Between each clip is space for a transition. A double click on the tranition icon allows to scan between nothing, a simple cross disolve or a link dependent on your chosen theme. There are 5 themes to select from (Modern, Bright, Playful, News and Travel) and this choice informs the design of the titles and transitions. Bright and Modern are probably the most functional and least intrusive.

As we mentioned it’s as easy to add titles as it is transitions, by double tapping on the clip, and there a range of styles to choose from in each theme, and you can also add a GPS-informed location if you so desire.

Once your movie is done, it can be exported easy to the camera roll in 3 resolutions, maxing out at 720p, and from there it can be easily uploaded to YouTube or emailed as a complete package. Quality does suffer as a result of the compression, but YouTube uploads are relatively rapid and really straightforward.

Despite its brilliant functionality and a tremendously slick and user-friendly interface there’s still a few improvements we’d like to see. More video and audio effects and transitions would have been a nice bonus, as well as the ability to position music clips anywhere in the timeline instead of just at the start. We’d have also liked control of the volume as, if you’re presenting, it completely overwhelms the voice clip.

Other issues come with the phone itself. It’s often difficult to grip the device without covering the microphones, and even more tricky to keep this super slim and lightweight device still when shooting, as you’ll see from our video report.

However, as a video journalist, this is perhaps one of the most overwhelming positive reasons to buy a phone. Knowing that in any circumstances, as long as the iPhone 4 is nestling in the back pocket, the tools are available to shoot, edit and post a video of passable quality to the waiting world is a huge comfort.

In a world where web video is often more about getting the footage live, rather than showcasing overwhelmingly high quality footage, this app enables a more happy medium. This app will empower the citizen journalist to new levels and perhaps more importantly, improve the quality of those poorly shot low res YouTube clips beyond recognition.

iMovie for iPhone hasn’t had as much publicity as it probably should have because this, along with the 720p video, is perhaps the overriding reason to opt for Apple’s new smartphone.

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View, edit and search your FileMaker Pro records on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with FileMaker Go. Whether you’re checking inventory in the warehouse, managing event registration on-site, or updating project status while travelling, you can do it all while you’re on the go. These highly anticipated apps are now available to purchase from the App Store.

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While Best Buy has made a commitment to stock more tablet computers, that doesn’t mean the electronics chain will be dropping other devices anytime soon. The chain plans to continue offering customers a variety of consumer products.

The huge sales of the iPad has launched rumors that the tablet computer will spur the demise of netbooks, since both are seen as smaller replacements for notebook computers, but am exec at Best Buy doesn’t see that happening in the near future. Shawn Score, president of Best Buy’s wireless retail unit, Best Buy Mobile, told Forbes magazine, “In the short horizon, I don’t see any device categories going away. It will take consumers some time to figure out how many devices they’re willing to have.”

Smartphones—and their service plans—have become a major seller for the chain, and the Best Buy Mobile stores expect to continue stocking an average of 90 to 100 phone models per location. Will the upcoming batch of tablets be also be sold with service plans? Score isn’t sure yet. “Will people opt for service plans on each device or rely on their Wi-Fi at home. There are still some unknowns relative to tablets.”

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iFixit tore down the Motorola Droid 2 and reports that Motorola left intact all that was great about the original Droid and updated just what needed fixing. Droid 2 includes faster speeds and longer battery life.

The Motorola Droid 2 went on sale on the Verizon network Aug. 12—going head-to-head with the launch of the BlackBerry Torch on AT&T. The folks at iFixit immediately got their hands on the successor to Motorola’s popular and accolade-winning Droid and performed a teardown to compare the two.

The verdict? Motorola knows its way around an update.

“Motorola certainly took the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ route by keeping everything people didn’t complain about exactly the same and upgrading the bits that mattered,” iFixit said in an Aug. 12 statement. “Who wouldn’t like smoother games and faster browsing?”

Motorola made “significant” internal evolutionary changes, the repair company reported—for example, giving the Droid 2 a 1GHz processor and 802.11n connectivity, compared to the Droid’s 802.11g—which result in an “overall speedier experience.” And still, the internal layouts of the two devices are so similar that, once apart, said iFixit, it’s hard to tell one from the other.

Both Moto smartphones come with the same 3.7-inch full WVGA TFT LCD display, with a resolution of 854 by 480, and the same 2.7V, 1390 mAh lithium-ion polymar battery. On the Droid 2, however, Motorola made enough internal improvements that the battery now reportedly yields 575 minutes of usage time, versus the 385 advertised minutes it offered on the original Droid. Additionally, the battery (we’re looking at you, iPhone) can easily be removed.

Also new is that the Droid 2’s 5-megapixel rear-facing camera supports DVD-quality video recording at 30 frames per second, up from the Droid’s 24. It also has a SanDisk 8GB NAND flash package soldered to it main board.

“This part wasn’t included in the original Droid,” wrote iFixit. “The Droid 2 only comes with [an] 8GB microSD card, so its storage capacity out of the box is the same as the original. We didn’t investigate how Android handles the filesystem being split across two physical devices.”

The Droid is priced at $199 with a two-year service contract, and like the original Droid it pairs its touch screen with a QWERTY keyboard, which Verizon already emphasized is also unique, as it’s a “symmetrical keyboard with raised keys for more responsive typing to push out notes and status updates,” the carrier said in a statement.

The Droid 2 also ships with Android 2.2 (versus the Droid’s 2.0) as well as support for Microsoft Exchange, Adobe Flash 10.1 and various e-mail and messaging applications. There’s quick access to Google services, as well as assisted and simultaneous GPS. The Droid 2 can also act as a hotspot for up to five WiFi-enabled devices.

In 22 steps, iFixit transformed the Droid 2 from a serious market competitor to a table of shiny bits. “Are you wondering if the Droid 2 has the capacity to reassemble itself?” the team joked. Despite Motorola’s marketing slogan, it’s likely not something Droid does.

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