Interesting bit Gigaom says about Palm Pre in its discussion on 3 ups and 3 downs of the phone.
“Similar to the initial iPhone and Android launches, the software cupboard is bare, with only a dozen apps or so. Smartphones without apps are just expensive feature phones these days, so Palm needs to get the Mojo SDK out the door.”
Check out this NY Times post: Gravity Tank, a Chicago-based creative consulting firm, surveyed over a thousand iPhone and Android G1 users in April and May. Among some of the findings from the report: respondents have downloaded an average of 23.6 applications to their phone and use an average of 6.8 apps every day.
Also, nearly half (48 percent) of phone owners report shopping for apps more than once a week. About the same number (49 percent) report using apps on their phone for more than 30 minutes a day.
Tips on what to do in prep for iPhone OS 3.0 update — whenever it arrives.
Sync & back-up: Make sure to sync your iPhone before updating the software. This way, if there are any problems during the update your computer will have a recent back-up of your iPhone (photos, recent calls and voicemails, text messages, game scores, settings, etc.). Remember that to back-up your photos, you’ll need to open iPhoto while syncing your iPhone and then choose (once it opens) for the program to copy all of your iPhone photos. Here’s Apple’s guide for backing up, restoring and updating your iPhone. (Note, yes iTunes does a an update of your iPhone while installing the new OS — but one time that update did not save properly and I was forced to reinstall from a much earlier backup — not fun at all. Better to be safe than sorry, IMHO.)
Update apps: Make sure before updating to install any updates for your apps. Apple announced a few weeks ago that all apps must be compatible with the new operating system. Be sure to update so all your apps will work with the new system.
Update iTunes: iTunes version 8.2 (that includes OS 3.0 support) came out a week ago. Make sure to update to the latest version of iTunes so you can take full advantage of OS 3.0 straight away. There will likely be high demand for downloading from Apple when OS 3.0 is available, so updating iTunes before that day will mean you can get right down to updating your iPhone.
Save space: This is more of a just-in-case, rather than a have-to. Still, I’d suggest that, if possible, iPhone owners free up about 1.5 gigs of space on the phone just to make sure there is free space for updating the operating system. This will also help as there will likely be new cool apps you’ll want to download that take advantage of OS 3.0.
Save money: The new operating system is sure to be followed by plenty of cool new apps. Sure some will be free, but those apps truly taking advantage of OS 3.0 will mean more development time and, therefore, paid apps. Keep those iTunes gift cards at-the-ready for OS 3.0 day.
Facebook for BlackBerry v1.6 launching tonight (via mobilecrunch) — includes improvements to views of status updates, walls and photos.
Facebook application now available on Nokia Ovi store (via Go Mo News) — only works for Symbian S60 touchscreen devices.
In four years 30 percent of smartphones will include app stores, estimates research firm In-Stat in a report released this week.
The report also found that:
