HTC EVO 4G Now Available

As previously announced, the highly anticipated 4G smartphone, HTC EVO 4G, is now available in the U.S. Customers can purchase the device at Sprint retail stores, RadioShack, Best Buy and Walmart, as well as through Sprint.com.

The device costs $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate (taxes excluded).

You can read our hands-on review of the HTC EVO 4G here; in short, it’s a very advanced smartphone with top-of-the-line hardware and capable of 4G data transfer speeds, which is about 10 times faster than current 3G speeds.

To highlight the HTC EVO 4G launch, Sprint today started a major social media campaign, called Sprint Firsts, which encourages users to perform various activities at 4G speeds and let their friends know about it. Participants are being awarded 4G badges, and users who manage to be the “first” will get featured on the EVO homepage.

Yelp for iPhone Adds Foursquare-Like Badges and Royalty Status

The new iteration of Yelp’s iPhone app isn’t live just yet, but a company blog post gives a window into what’s coming very soon: badges, and a hierarchy of “royalty” that lets you “rule” venues, neighborhoods, and even cities.

The royalty feature is much akin to Foursquare’s (Foursquare) mayorship feature, and lets Yelp (Yelp) users with the most checkins become the “Duke” or “Duchess” of a particular venue. Yelp goes a step further with the hierarchy, however, offering users with most Dukedoms in a particular neighborhood to be named the “Baron” and even a “King” to be crowned for most Dukedoms in an entire city.

The company itself acknowledges in the blog post that “we’re not the first ones to offer checkins,” but that adding these features “furthers Yelp’s mission of connecting people with and supporting great local businesses.” Yelp also provides some statistics behind why they’re investing in new mobile features: a full 27% of all searches on the review site come from their iPhone app.

Yelp has submitted this 5th major iteration of its app for Apple’s smartphone, which should become available in the App Store (App Store) soon. The company also notes that Android (Android) owners won’t have long to wait either until the new functionality hits the Yelp client on that platform; we got a sneak peek of what Android users have to look forward to at Google (Google) I/O.

It may be derivative at this point, but it nevertheless stands to add a fun element to the process of checking in to locations. The addition of higher order titles in the royalty hierarchy for being the most active in your neighborhood or city are an interesting new spin on the concept as well. What do you think of Yelp’s move into the game mechanics territory of location services that Foursquare earlier blazed?

Apple’s New Direction: Will the Tablet Replace the PC?

Yesterday at the D8 conference in Los Angeles, Steve Jobs laid out his vision of what’s to come. While Apple’s CEO went in-depth on a plethora of interesting subjects (e.g. Adobe Flash, the lost iPhone, iAds), he spent much of the stage time talking about the future of computing, specifically the PC.

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg of AllThingsD asked Jobs whether the tablet is going to replace the laptop. Jobs’s response was an analogy:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy.”

That short exchange says a lot about the direction Apple could take computing over the next decade. Apple still sells the Mac and the Macbook, and while the term “PC” is now synonymous with WindowsWindowsWindows machines, the meaning of PC — personal computer — can also apply to the Mac and Macbook.

Was Apple’s CEO referring to not only Windows PCs, but Macs as well? It’s tough to say for certain, but I think it’s very likely. Jobs clearly thinks PCs are on the way out, in favor of the more portable, less complex tablet and mobile form factors. His iPad has already validated the market for tablets, and we expect many more tablets to enter the market over the next few years.

Apple lost the PC market to Microsoft years ago. If Jobs has his way though, that won’t matter — the market will shift towards mobile computing devices like the iPhone and the iPad, both of which Apple has complete control over. The tech titan doesn’t have full control over the Mac OS or its desktop, which must be frustrating to a man who relishes control.


Will the tablet replace the PC? Not in the next decade, at least. Hell, the Windows XP operating system is still the world’s most popular OS. It takes time for disruptive technologies to take hold.

For now, the tablet will be a complementary device to the PC. The PC has had far more time to be fleshed out and performs countless tasks faster and better than the iPad or any other tablet device on the market. In a decade though, we may be singing a different tune.

Apple Shows Us What HTML5 Can Do

Apple is one of the biggest supporters of HTML5, and Steve Jobs clearly states he thinks this new web standard is the future of the web. To show what, exactly, it means by that, Apple launched a HTML5 showcase, displaying what a HTML5-capable browser can do without the need to install any additional plugins.

In typical Apple style, the showcase consists of simple, elegant, and yet quite impressive demos of this technology. In one demo, you can type in some text, quickly change the font, its size and transparency, rotate it or add a shadow effect. Another lets you browse through a horizontal, vertical or grid-shaped gallery of images, while a particularly impressive demo lets you spin a 3D object by clicking and dragging.

Apple’s message is clear: HTML5 is mature enough for wide adoption, and sites which require add-ons to display content are a thing of the past. The text on the site states: “Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web.” Yes, you can definitely cover a lot of ground that used to belong to Flash with HTML5. What Apple doesn’t tell us is that one could create a similar showcase in Flash with far more advanced effects, which are way out of reach of HTML5 and CSS3.

To try out any of the demos you’ll need to download the latest version of Safari.

First Sprint EVO Commercial Hits YouTube [VIDEO]

This interesting Sprint EVO commercial has just hit the tubes — and the TVs, as well.

For the network’s red-hot-though-as-yet-unlaunched device, the marketing folks have decided to make some pretty grandiose comparisons. Let’s gloss over whatever the narrator is saying, which is something along the lines of, “First isn’t later; it’s now.” If you have any idea what that means, you get a prize.*

*Not really.

Moving on to the imagery, we first see a prehistoric-looking wheel rolling into a velocipede, which tumbles into a locomotive standing on end. This turns into a domino chain of famously game-changing, ground-breaking inventions knocking into one another. A phonograph knocks over a microscope (we’re hoping this isn’t intended to be chronolgical), which bashes into a typewriter and a dangling cluster of lightbulbs. A telephone, a camera, an automobile and a wall of televisions also line up for our consideration.

Without belaboring the point any further, which Sprint indeed does, the company is comparing the phone, one in a string of similar devices such as the iPhone and the Droid, to space travel and microprocessors.

We don’t think so. It’s cool, and we get that Sprint wants us to know it’s the first 4G device, but they didn’t reinvent the wheel. Or space travel.

While this bit of filmic whimsy might appeal to some, I personally preferred the hard, cold awesomeness of the robotic arms in the Motorola Droid ads. What do you think of this commercial? Is Sprint exaggerating the EVO’s impact? Or is it a cool bit of advertising that will speak to more people than previous smartphone campaigns?

Skype iPhone 3G App Downloaded 5 Million Times

On Sunday, Skype 2.0 was launched for the iPhone 3G, bringing a long-sought feature to the table: making calls over 3G. By now, 5 million users downloaded the application from the iTunes Store, showing just how important this feature was to users.

Unfortunately, the new feature came with an unpleasant announcement: after August 2010, Skype will start charging a monthly fee for the 3G calling feature – on top of whatever fee you’re already paying your mobile operator for data transfer.

Skype promises the fee will be reasonable. “We’re not going to want to price ourselves out of the market. I can’t ignore the fact that consumers (currently) use us for free,” said Russ Shaw, Skype’s general manager for mobile. Still, one cannot help but wonder how the users will react when faced with a double fee for mobile VoIP calls. How do you feel about it? Will you continue using Skype over 3G after the fee is introduced? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Facebook and Google Maps Dominate Smartphone App Usage [STUDY]

Nielsen has released a new mobile application report and its findings showcase not only the increase in smartphone usage, but also what applications are most popular. For its report, Nielsen surveyed more than 4,200 people who had downloaded a mobile application in the last 30 days.

The survey really highlights just how much smartphone ownership trails traditional feature phone ownership, at least in the U.S. Nielsen’s study shows that 21% of American wireless subscribers have smartphones.

Still, even non-smartphone users have heavily embraced mobile apps. Nielsen’s survey indicates that the average number of apps that a feature phone user has on his or her device is 10, while the average number of apps a smartphone user has is 22.

Broken down even further, the average number of installed apps based on smartphone OS looks like this:

* BlackBerry: 10
* iPhone: 37
* Android (Android): 22
* Palm: 14
* Windows Mobile: 13

Most Popular Smartphone Apps

While the specific applications vary from platform to platform, the most popular apps across smartphones were pretty consistent in this report: Maps, weather, Facebook and music all had strong showings.

Check out this chart which breaks down the five most popular apps by smartphone OS:



It’s interesting to see just how much Facebook dominates the mobile app space; it’s one of the top five apps on each of the platforms highlighted. Still, Nielsen notes that broken down by demographic, MySpace (MySpace) is still very popular among teens and that LinkedIn (LinkedIn) is strong in the 25-44 demographic.