Apple is continuing its “famous person uses Siri” commercials by bringing in famous person John Malkovich to add a soupçon of Old World weltschmerz and philosophizing to what is, in short, a way to schedule a wake-up call without unlocking your phone. The commercials feature Malkovich in what appears to be the house above the nasty places in Hostel where he muses on fine meats and the meaning of life.

I don’t quite get these celebrity appearances but, in the end, I suppose they’re good for brand awareness. Siri isn’t for the geeks – it’s for the folks who may have once been in love with BlackBerries. Siri suggests a certain ease, a certain subsumed technicality that would draw in the C-level exec and, in parallel, well-known superstars. It is, in short, a little assistant that will never talk back to you, never ask for a raise, and never request that you stop cursing.

That they chose Malkovich for this one is a little odd on the surface but it makes sense: Malkovich’s audience these days is the indie-film-loving, ironic post-gen-X C-level business person who is adult enough to be able to spend a little money on a 4S yet still is wary of being marketed at. A similar demographic targeting is shown in the choice of Samuel L. Jackson (the just-below-Mensa-level adventure/action loving geek who remembers Mace Windu’s sword) and Zooey Deschanel grabs the plugged-in hipster demographic. If you extrapolated this further into an older demographic you could almost foresee commercials featuring Betty White and maybe Leonard Nimoy.

For those who find these a bit out of character, I suggest we go back and look at the Mac vs. PC ads that featured two memorable faces who, arguably, cannot be disassociated from that campaign. You can’t look at John Hodgman – even with his sassy little mustache – and not see that poor, put-upon PC being shown up by Justin Long.

The iPod advertising was genius because it made everyone think they could move like a sinuous dancer to the lilting chords of Jet. These new commercials allow a certain type of consumer to associate him or herself with a certain archetype. As inclusive as Apple seems to its fans, it’s still important to segment those still on the fence and, one by one, speak directly to them.

Google today launched version 2.0 of its search app for iPhone. Google completely overhauled the design of the app, which now looks and feels more like the app’s iPad version the company launched last November. The new version feels significantly faster than the last one and the new design works especially well for image searches.

In line with last year’s iPad update, the new app now features the ability to easily swipe back and forth between your search results and the pages you clicked on. It’s also become significantly easier to switch between Google’s various search features like images, places, shopping and videos. Whenever you swipe up to the top of the search results page now, a new menu opens up at the bottom of the screen that lets you switch between the different search features.

The app, of course, also still support voice search and gives users access to all of Google’s other services like Google Goggles, Gmail and Google+. One interesting feature is its ability to detect which other Google apps you have installed on your phone and then allows you to switch to them instead of using the company’s HTML5 apps.

Overall, the app is a nice improvement over the previous version. It builds upon a trend we’ve seen lately from Google toward better mobile apps, including the recent  Google+ for iPhone redesign. For the most part, though, most users will likely continue to do most of their searches from their favorite mobile browser.

As evidenced by the success of Chatroulette, people get a kick out of seeing each other (anonymously) on video. Taking that to heart, WhosHere – an app that has allowed countless people to meet and greet each other in meatspace – has launched a video chat service that lets folks connect when and where they want.

The update embeds video chat into the standard text and voice chat already available through the app. Rather than allowing random video and photo encounters immediately, however, the system turns off most media sharing by default.

From the PR:

Although it will never replace seeing a nearly naked man staring at you out of murky darkness on Omegle, it’s definitely a step forward for mobile dating and chat apps.

Product Page

These Fraunhofer microprojectors are still quite a ways off from being implemented into real phones, but the technology is certainly interesting. Based on an insect’s compound eye, the projector is a wafer of tiny LEDs that can twist and turn depending on position. This means there is no “keystoning” and the beams striking the surface will always be “crisp and clear.”

“Our projector consists of hundreds of tiny microprojectors in an array, each of which generates a complete image,” said Marcel Sieler, a researcher. “This technology, known as ‘array projection,’ is modeled on nature – on the compound eye found in some insects – and with it for the first time we can create very thin and bright LED projection systems with tremendous imaging properties.”

In short, the screen geometry changes with the position of the projector. Using the phone’s position sensor the projector calculates the optimum angle for each micro-array.

By adding infrared beams to the mix, the researchers have been able to make the screens touch sensitive, allowing you to tap, swipe, and select items on any surface. Because the arrays are very small you could feasibly stuff these into a phone or even a smart surface that interacts directly with a mobile device.

The company will display the system this month but don’t expect it in your phones for a while. The future, as they say, is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.

via Fraunhofer

Back in July of last year, we wrote about a New York City-based startup, called Consmr, which was attempting to build the Yelp, or Rotten Tomatoes of consumer goods. There’s now more web research on consumer goods than ever before, but few resources that use crowdsourced data and social integration to recommend the right product. There are cool sites like Fixya, but opportunity for a service that provides ratings and reviews of consumer packaged goods.

At the time, Consmr was just starting out and to really up its value proposition, it was focused on becoming a data-vore and growing its user base to increase the quality of its recs before adding a component. Of course, for a service like Consmr, it’s all about the aisle experience — being able to whip out your phone at the point of (in)decision. So, today Consmr added a big piece to the puzzle, launching its iPhone app, which is now powered by over 100K user ratings.

It was smart for the startup to wait until it had gained some traction before diving into mobile. But the team thinks that the service is there now, as it has the pieces in place which makes its primary iPhone interaction, barcode scanning, a more valuable tool.

There are some 30 or 40 iPhone apps that offer barcode and QR code scanning, all with various complementary features. Some mobile couponing apps offer scanners. But Consmr Founder and CEO Ryan Charles (who is the former head of mobile at Zagat) thinks that the app will have a leg up because it comes with a product recommendation engine built in. Consumers can download the app and take out their phones at the grocery or drugstore and instantly see reviews.

With the iPhone app, users can also search or browse by criteria, filter results by hundreds of attributes, like gluten-free, sensitive skin, or curly hair, automatically view suggested alternatives for products, or which of their friends likes a particular product.

So, after scanning the barcode, one has the ability to sort through reviews and ratings based on quality, effectiveness, health and nutrition as they’re standing there in the aisle holding it, and leave a review on the spot.

Of course, sifting through products to review can be time-consuming and tedious, so it’s been important for the site to offer its users incentive. Although it experimented with badges and “flair” during its beta, Charles says that users were more motivated by sharing product experiences (a la Yelp) than they were in receiving badges or becoming the “Mayor of Toothpaste.”

The startup is offering that element of gamification by allowing user to compete to become category experts. By writing reviews in different categories, you can become an expert in chips and dip, or frozen foods, and once you become an expert, you and your reviews are featured throughout the app, including a dedicated section that only displays those with PhDs in products. The startup is focused on rewarding its power users just like Yelp does, with cool swag and events.

As to how it’s making money? Consmr intends to monetize through special offers on products. So, a user might scan a product and receive a coupon for a discount on that product. Charles says that the team is currently building the brand relationships that will power this functionality, but, for now, the focus is on offering a great product for consumers.

It’s definitely on the way, and the service’s new mobility is a big step in the right direction.

For more on Consmr, check out our previous coverage, and find the new app here.

A post on CNN Money found that during a quick assessment of 10 Verizon stores and reps in New York – arguably a small sample size – the representatives would pitch Verizon’s Android’s 4G phones over the “old fashioned” 3G iPhone. Said one rep: “The iPhone is a great phone, but it’s on 3G. I’m not going to recommend a phone that’s outdated.”

Now I don’t doubt David Goldman’s story that Verizon reps are pushing Android inventory in New York if only to clear out the back room. However, I had to test it myself. I chatted briefly with a Verizon rep online and found that she (I assume it was a she as her name was Chiquita) just wanted to close the sale rather than steer me towards anything else:

You’ll also note that Verizon is currently incentivizing 4G with double data plans for LTE phones. We also spoke to one sales rep under the condition of anonymity who said they had heard nothing about any specific promotion to with Android phones. And, as you see in my own exchange, the rep was more than happy to steer me towards an iPhone. Panic averted.

The biggest problems with Kremlinology like this is that some sales incentives may not percolate out to every sales rep and that the impetus to push Android phones may be regional and plays into a number of biases in terms of perceived wealth, gender, and surrounding culture. Although a blind, Turing-style interaction with a sales rep online is fairly blind, whether you’re pushed an iPhone or a RAZR at a store on Broadway has a lot to do with a lot of things. Until we see a document (and we’re looking) that says Verizon reps get extra ponies if they pitch Android over iOS, I’m not buying it.

In September 2010, I wrote a post that ignited an absolute shitstorm around these parts. “Shitstorm” in this case meaning a post with a thousand comments, the majority of which were spewed up by rabid Android fanatics. The title of that post:

Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?

At the time, we were in the midst of a massive Android surge to the top of the smartphone ecosystem food chain. This was happening all around the world, but the focus of this particular post was the U.S. market. Based on some comments made by developer David Beach at the time, I wondered if, as the title suggested, Android was only doing so well in the U.S. because the iPhone was still only available on one carrier, AT&T?

It’s time to revisit that thought because there’s now absolutely no question that this was the case. There’s now data to back it up. What’s more, despite what some surveys suggest, this trend may have fully reversed itself.

Over the past few days, both comScore and NPD have put out data showing that Android still has a healthy hold on the U.S. smartphone market with their best market share numbers yet. According to comScore, Android controls 51 percent of the market. According to NPD, it’s more like 61 percent.

For comparison, Apple is the number two player with 30.7 percent of the market according to comScore, and 29 percent according to NPD.

On the surface, there’s one big glaring problem with these numbers. Actual sales data from the three largest carriers in the U.S. doesn’t seem to back up the comScore and NPD numbers. At all.

In the last quarter, the iPhone accounted for 78 percent of all smartphones sold through AT&T. On Verizon, the iPhone accounted for 51 percent of all smartphones sold. Sprint didn’t report their total smartphone sales numbers, only iPhone sales numbers, but estimates peg the iPhone percentage around 60 percent. The iPhone is not (yet) sold on the nation’s fourth largest carrier, T-Mobile.

That’s 51 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s largest carrier (Verizon). 78 percent of all smartphone sold on the nation’s number two carrier (AT&T). And 60 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s number three carrier (Sprint). Jay Yarow of Business Insider did the math: all together, the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of the smartphone sales in the past quarter on the big three carriers. The 63 percent number is close to the 59 percent estimated by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt last week, as reported by Eric Savitz for Forbes.

And if you believe the Yankee Group, the big three carriers account for roughly 80 percent of the overall U.S. smartphone market. This equates to almost exactly 50 percent of the overall smartphone market in the U.S. for Apple.

It’s hard to see how Android could control 61 percent of the market when there’s only 50 percent to spare after the actual numbers are calculated. Maybe Android is huge with undocumented workers. Undocumented workers who love taking surveys, mind you. But I digress…

And, of course, there are other smartphones out there from RIM, Microsoft, Nokia, and the like. Even giving Android the other 50 percent of the market would mean all of the other players equal zero percent. (Sadly, perhaps not that far off, actually.)

ComScore at least has some wiggle room here. They don’t actually measure phone sales quarter to quarter, but overall market usage. So it’s certainly possible that after a few years of Android sales, they do still control the majority of the U.S. smartphone market. But their numbers get sticky when you look quarter-to-quarter and see that Android’s market share increased nearly four time more than the iPhone’s market share this past quarter. Again, that doesn’t sound right when the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of all smartphones sold on the big three carriers.

When I brought this point up a few days ago, comScore was quick with an answer. They told me that amongst the big three carriers, the iPhone subscriber growth actually did outpace Android subscriber growth, 13 percent to 11 percent. It’s just that overall Android growth from the remaining carriers (meaning T-Mobile and the regional carriers) more than wiped out that difference.

First of all, 13 percent (iPhone) versus 11 percent (Android) growth on the big three carriers still doesn’t sound right if the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of all sales last quarter. Second, if the big three do in fact make up about 80 percent of the overall market, how did the remaining 20 percent tilt the scales 4x in favor of Android (in terms of market share growth quarter to quarter)? It doesn’t make sense.

And then you look at NPD’s numbers. Yarow demolished those earlier. And sure enough, NPD reached out right away with clarifications.

Here’s the real issue: this rapid swing in favor of the iPhone seems to have exposed some serious flaws in the way these market analysts get their data. They’re hiding behind vague technicalities on how their numbers could be what they say, but they still don’t add up. Their problem is that we have actual numbers from the three largest carriers in the U.S., all of which are finally selling the iPhone and boasting about those numbers because they’re huge.

So how do the other guys get their numbers?

Surveys.

In comScore’s case, their MobiLens data comes from “an intelligent online survey of a nationally representative sample of mobile subscribers age 13 and older”. They don’t disclose the number of people surveyed, but you can bet it’s not a massive number (sure enough, it’s not, see update below). In NPD’s case, they survey 12,811 people.

Which numbers do you trust? Millions upon millions of actual sales reported in a legal manner by public companies or surveys of thousands of people?

Further, as Ethan Kaplan points out, “NPD and the like are incentive based surveys so naturally skew a certain way. Teens, college students, etc.” Several others have made this point over the past few days. The numbers comScore and NPD use in their statistically small surveys are likely skewed for a number of reasons. And again, now we have actual sales data that heavily suggests that’s the case.

By now, I probably have the Android fanatics really upset, so let’s throw out all these rational numbers and instead continue on with the dream that Android is “winning” in the U.S. Not winning in revenue or profit mind you — you know, things that actually matter for business, and things which Android will likely never be winning in any sense of the word — but winning in terms of overall market share. If you want to ignore all the above information and insist that Android is still winning there, that’s fine. But let’s jump back to the beginning of this post.

Again, the argument made in September 2010 was that Android was winning in market share in the U.S. because Apple was letting it win by only making the iPhone available on AT&T’s network. If Android still does control half to two-thirds of the market as the surveys suggest, what does it mean that on the three carriers where the iPhone is available, Apple now controls over 60 percent of these markets on a quarterly basis? (Again, this is fact backed up by actual sales numbers.)

It means that Android was/is winning in market share because Apple was/is allowing it to.

Android was previously the top smartphone OS for both Verizon and Sprint. But that was only because the iPhone was not available on either network until last year. When it became available, it quickly shot to the top. One type of phone outsold hundreds of other models combined. That’s pretty insane.

And it doesn’t speak well for the future of Android’s market share, survey or not. At least not in the U.S. (the rest of the world is more complicated for many other reasons). What if Apple finally puts the iPhone on T-Mobile later this year? Given what we now know — again, from actual data — is there any question that it becomes the top smartphone there? What about the other, smaller regional carriers? That’s already starting to happen.

Android’s only hope is to actually have a phone, or a set of phones, that are more appealing to consumers than the iPhone. But that hasn’t happened in the past four years, so what makes us think that will change this year? Or next year? All Apple has to do is say the word and they can win the market share battle in this country.

Actually, again, if you consider the numbers above, it sure looks like they already have won that battle.

Update: comScore notes that their surveys are 3-month averages of about 30,000 mobile phone users.

iPhone unlocks are usually a tetchy experience – you have to have the right firmware on the right model iPhone at the right time. Now, however, thanks to a method that spoofs the activation server, you can unlock almost any iPhone semi-permanently.

The system, called Subscriber Artificial Module or SAM, requires a jailbroken iPhone and Cydia. To run it, you de-activate your phone, insert a new SIM, and then activate SAM. SAM spoofs the activation process, convincing the phone that it has been unlocked properly and without issues.

Built by hackers Loktar_Sun and Laforet, the process isn’t for the faint of heart and it takes twenty-eight steps. You can follow along at iClarified where they’ve outlined the entire process in meticulous detail.

Because you’re not really unlocking the phone but in fact activating it using an unsupported SIM, expect some wonky server issues. You will also have to go back and reactivate the device later if you decide to switch SIMs. It’s a small price to pay for freedom.

I try my best to stay away from writing about speaker docks and phone cases. In my experience, they’re all the same, save for a few minor tweaks here and there. But today I stumbled upon a pretty novel little iPhone speaker dock that just so happens to be 100 percent green and uses no electricity whatsoever.

You’re intrigued. I can feel it.

Meet the iBamboo iPhone speaker dock. It’s made from a single piece of bamboo, and holds the iPhone in place as it plays music to amplify the sound. Granted, you won’t get any extra power in the lows or feel that bass keep bumpin’ bumpin’ (this beat goes boom, boom), but you will get some added volume and that’s all the casual listener needs anyways.

Plus, the iBamboo is pretty damn beautiful, in both bamboo and black color flavors. It exists in perfect harmony with the minimalist design of Apple products, and is eco-friendly to boot.

The folks over at iBamboo also make some other cool stuff, including a Bamboo iPhone 4/4S case, as well as a new line of iBamboo speaker docks made of recycled plastic. That line is called the iBamboo Speaker Urban, and while it looks exactly the same in terms of design, it comes in translucent and black plastic rather than Bamboo.

Stock is currently quite low on the iBamboo, so you may have to wait, but the site lists a notification alert system so if you’re really excited about this, I’d recommend signing up.

If you’re still not sold on this things legitimacy, check out this video of the iBamboo speaker doing its thang:

[via DVICE]

Well, here’s an app that’s actually practical. Cloud Photos (for iOS) is a newly launched mobile camera replacement app which automatically uploads photos to Dropbox, as soon as you snap the picture. The idea here is that you can use the app to save space on your iPhone’s disk drive, as it allows you to save photos directly to the cloud instead of the iPhone’s Camera Roll.

Within Cloud Photos, you can browse the photos stored in your Dropbox folders, which displays them as thumbnails that take up 1/40th of the space of the original, the app’s developers claim.

If you would rather just use the app as a Dropbox uploader, that’s possible too – from the app’s camera interface, you can choose to save to the Camera Roll instead, and then switch on the new “Auto Upload” feature to sync all your Camera Roll pics to Dropbox’s cloud.

That’s also a handy option since the shortcut to the camera from the iPhone’s lockscreen isn’t configurable, meaning you’ll probably still be taking a lot of pictures with the default camera app, which then end up in the Camera Roll.

The app’s co-creator Andrew Norris, who bootstrapped Cloud Photos with his brother Jonathan, says that the eventual plan is to support other services beyond Dropbox.

“The concept of the app is to be the centralized app to view and control your photos wherever they live,” Norris explains. “We started with support for Dropbox because of their user base and a very flexible API,” he says.

As someone who personally switched back from Android to the iPhone 4S myself, one of my frustrations with the iPhone’s camera/camera roll interface is the lack of built-in sharing features. Tweeting a photo is not enough, and generally, not even practical. I miss how Android phones let you share photos to just about every service imaginable without the need for a third-party app.

Cloud Photos goes a long way to address that issue. Not only does the app house all your Dropbox photos, it also pulls in photos from your Camera Roll, Photostream, and any local folders you’ve created. From any of these folders, the app’s sharing options let you share photos to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram or via email.

Plus, you can copy or move photos to other folders, or event print out the photo, if you choose.

However, the one thing you can’t do – and this is by design – is apply filters or effects to your photos. “We think the Camera filter market is pretty saturated currently,” explains Norris, “so we decided to avoid it at launch and support ‘Open In…’ which opens your photos in those other apps.” In other words, you can open photos in Cloud Photos directly in Instagram without having to leave the app.

After giving Cloud Photos access to your Camera Roll and Dropbox account upon first launch, it creates a “Photos” folder in Dropbox to save your uploads, but you can choose to save to another folder by tapping a button on the app’s camera view. The camera itself includes several controls including one to control the flash, another to switch between the front-facing and rear cameras, and even advanced controls for white balance, focus, exposure and the ability to switch on gridlines.

Photos are uploaded over Wi-Fi and 3G (configurable in the settings).

The Norris brothers, both graduated engineers, have launched app as a part of their new development company Syrp, Inc. based in Toronto, after having first spent a few years working in the corporate world.

Cloud Photos is available here for $1.99 in iTunes.

Topps, the company best known for its Bazooka bubble gum and for essentially inventing and popularizing trading cards in the 1950s, is today releasing its first-ever mobile apps in conjunction with the start of the 2012 Major League Baseball season. That’s right. People of all ages may remember collecting and trading their favorite players’ cards as youngsters, and though trading cards don’t quite enjoy the same level of ubiquity as they did in decades past, Topps’ cards remain iconic for most sports fans.

Over its 60 year history, Topps has moved beyond baseball, not only producing trading cards for all the major sports, but comic books and games as well. Yet if the trading cards and chewing gum company is ever going to get serious about becoming part of the digital era, mobile has to be a part of that strategy. And trading cards may just lend themselves well to a digital reincarnation — or so the company hopes, as today it moves beyond cardboard with the launch of its first iOS apps, Topps BUNT and Topps Pennant.

With its new iOS apps, Topps aims to leverage the sizable inventory of statistics, images, facts, and figures it has developed over the years, combining the history of the game with modern tech. Topps Pennant, the company tells us, presents a “modern box score” on both the iPhone and iPad, allowing fans to recreate more than 60 years of baseball — every team, season, game, and play going back to 1952.

Topps Pennant enables baseball fans to view box scores and live play-by-play of games from this season as well as from over 115K games from the past. While this is something that ESPN and others have been doing now for quite some time, Topps offers users the ability to view its exhaustive catalog of historical stats in good-looking, interactive infographics. The company has taken its time in developing apps that leverage all the capabilities of the iPad, so that even if you already have an app you use for box scores, this one’s worth checking out.

Topps BUNT, the company’s second iOS app, aims to bring fans a more user-friendly, accessible version of fantasy baseball, with a social game meant to act as a companion to the ongoing baseball season. As to how it works? Users create an account with Facebook or Twitter, pick a name and a personalized avatar, and then choose nine of their favorite players.

Users earn points based on how well those players perform, competing against other players, with scores being presented in a giant, multi-zone leaderboard. Users also get to check out game updates to track how their players are performing on the field in realtime, and trade the players that are batting below the Mendoza line.

Topps BUNT is really designed to be fantasy baseball for more casual fans, those who aren’t ready to commit to the more demanding, 162-game fantasy season. The team describes it as a mix between fantasy baseball, and popular iOS apps Turntable.fm and Draw Something. Having tested it out, the app definitely offers a fun, quirky baseball experience that could appeal to younger fans, especially those having grown up in the ubiquity of casual, Facebook-based social games.

To help bring its brand into the smartphone era, Topps hired the former Head of Product at Nokia (and five-year product veteran at Microsoft) Michael Bramlage. The VP of Digital tells us that, in the sports media landscape, most of the apps out there are from broadcasters or the leagues themselves, so that once fans get past MLB and ESPN apps, there’s not a lot quality outside of geeky, fantasy baseball apps. In other words, apps for the number crunchers and serious fans.

In my experience, this is true; there’s plenty of room for new and better ways to explore stats and interact with the game, especially for younger audiences who spend a lot of their time on mobile devices. For MLB.com, for example, more than 50 percent of traffic emanates from mobile.

Topps is leveraging its close relationship with the MLB Players Association and unique archive of player data and photos to go after newer, more casual fans in what Bramage calls a big “game mechanics play.” In that sense, Topps is not just looking to digitize baseball cards. The company put a lot of research into what cards represented to baseball fans emotionally and is reconstituting the figurative elements on the iPad — not just porting, but trying to re-imagine what player cards will mean to a younger generation.

In terms of the apps, Topps Pennant will be priced at $3.99 for a universal app that includes optimized versions for iPhone and iPad. However, Apple is currently running a launch special that puts the app at $2.99. Topps BUNT is available for free (on the iPad).

For more, check out Topps at home here, or the videos on the apps below:

There are a fair amount of third-party iPhone email clients out there, but few ever received the kind of reception that Sparrow for iPhone got a few weeks ago. Sadly, though, unless you have a jailbroken iPhone or use a third-party service like Boxcar, you won’t be able to get push notifications for new emails from Sparrow – but this could soon change.

Apple, in its infinite wisdom, decided that Sparrow couldn’t use the same kind of special push mechanism that VoIP apps like Skype use for calls and chats. According to Sparrow, the team could have enabled regular push notifications, but that would have meant storing all of its users email credentials on its own servers. Given that Sparrow is being developed by a small startup without a strong security background, the team decided that this was too much of a risk.

Today, Sparrow launched version 1.1 of its app. While this update includes a fair number of interesting new features, maybe the most interesting part of the announcement is that the Sparrow team will submit the next version of the app with built-in support for VoIP-style push notifications based on the assumption “that Apple might revise its position on the Push API.”

Even Sparrow itself notes that this is somewhat of a risky tactic. Should Apple decide to push back, however, Sparrow says that is already working on enabling push notifications with the help of “some partners” and “without needing Apple clearance.”

Version 1.2 will also include localization in nine languages, as well as support for composing messages in landscape mode.

As for the updates in today’s new version, the most important one is probably the ability to open links in emails in a built-in browser, a very convenient feature that was sorely missed in the first version. Other updates include the ability to only show specific labels and folders, to empty the trash and spam folders, and the option to keep your inbox a bit cleaner by automatically archiving a conversation after you reply to a message.

The other day, Matt made a desperate plea: “Please don’t buy cheap Android phones.” To do so is a mistake, and the more you buy, the more cheap phones flood the market, and thus more people are walking around with crap up against their faces.

And after hearing that Samsung has sold 5 million Galaxy Notes, I think it may be time to make my own plea: Please stop buying giant phones.

Now, obviously I don’t take this request as seriously as the whole cheap Android phone thing. But I was actually musing to myself just last night that if people continue to buy phones with 4.5-inch + screen sizes, phone makers will think that’s OK. It’s not. It’s just as dumb as Motorola’s advertising, directed squarely at men with robots and cyborgs.

I totally concede that a large display, perhaps at 4.3-inches tops, is nice. Watching video and playing games on those honking Android phones tickles my fancy in a way my little iPhone cannot. It’s quite glorious.

But then I try to do something normal. You know… text a friend, send an email, browse the web, get directions, tweet, Instagram a pic… or whatever. Sure, I check out YouTube a handful of times a week to show a friend some crazy sexy Japanese beatboxing girl and if I’m really bored and away from all of my other devices, I’ll sit down and switch on an episode of The Office within the Netflix app on my phone. And of course, when I’m chilling at home and news is dead, I’m probably running through a temple or flinging birds or effing up Liberty City in a freshly stolen car.

But on the whole, I’d say that 90 percent of what’s done on my phone has nothing to do with video or gaming, which is where the larger screen really wins.

Of course, mobile gaming figures are up as more and more users buy smartphones and developers pop out better and better games, but gaming is still relatively low on the list of usage scenarios. comScore’s January Mobile report said that the most common activity on a phone was text messaging, with 74.6 percent of U.S. subscribers (aged 13+) using their smartphone to send a text. Moreover, text messaging is still on the rise. Nearly tied for second, the next biggest mobile activities were using an app and browsing the web, followed closely by accessing a social network.

And at the bottom of the list is gaming, with 31.8 percent of users saying they’ve used their phone to play a game. Meanwhile, viewing video on mobile didn’t even make the list.

My phone is first and foremost about utility. I’m connecting to work, I’m emailing, I’m texting, I’m checking in on my social networks, and I’m surfing the web constantly. It gets me where I need to go first, and as a bonus, helps me get through those bored moments.

The issue I have with the big phones is that it cuts off a chunk of the market, and at the cost of innovation.

Phones are mobile. You know… mobile phones. By their very nature, they must be able to comfortably fit in your hand and in your pocket. They must be relatively light, and in a lot of instances, they must be discreet.

The bigger the display gets, the bigger the phone gets. It’s just simple math. But the trade-off we’re making for it is weak at best. As I said, mobile video isn’t something that most of us actually do very often, and gaming (while on the rise) isn’t the priority of a phone.

Sure, a big display makes some games a bit more enjoyable, but let’s think through the actual quality of game play. The most shining example I can think of is Madden ’11. I’ve played the game on both my 3.5-inch iPhone 4S and on a Droid Razr. (To be clear, the Droid Razr has a 4.3-inch display, which is exactly where I draw the line between fine and too big.)

I concede that I could physically see more of the game when I played on the Droid Razr, but any improvement wasn’t all that significant. This is because there’s only so much accuracy you can have with touch controls, and whether the screen is big or not, mobile gaming is thus far crippled by them. If you really need the very best portable gaming option out there, go get a PS Vita or a 3DS, or better yet, go get yourself a really nice gaming console. Hell, most people play games on their phone at home anyways. (Seriously.)

Then we have the mobile video argument, which doesn’t really deserve a response. (Obviously, I’ll give one anyways.) For one thing, we don’t watch video on our phones enough to warrant carrying around something so uncomfortable for the next two years. But it’s more than that.

Soon Nokia will release the Lumia 900 into the U.S. market. It’s got a 4.3-inch 480×800 display, and while I’m impressed with how resilient the screen is under bright sunlight, I would never choose this phone to watch a movie on over my iPhone 4S.

Mobile video is all about the pixels and the processing power, and a large screen (once again) is just a bonus — a bonus that isn’t all that worthwhile. Granted there are giant phones out there with 4.3-inch+ 720p displays, and sure, watching video on them is swell. But would I trade everyday comfort for only a slightly better experience on non-primary activities? Absolutely not, and I honestly don’t think you should either.

To all of you out there with hands giant enough to honestly and genuinely feel comfortable with the Galaxy Note, first and foremost, congratulate your girlfriends for me. But secondly, I understand that you can and will want to take advantage of bigger screens. You have giant hands, it only makes sense.

But there are lots of us, especially women, who physically cannot send a text on those giant phones with one hand. Do you know what an inconvenience it is to be forced into using two hands on a mobile phone? Let’s add to that the fact that these phones don’t fit into any pocket of a girls’ pair of jeans.

So just to clarify, roughly half of the population can neither text nor comfortably carry around these phones. And yet phone makers think that a honking display is somehow en vogue, likely because they simply follow each other in terms of trends.

There’s a reason that phones became smaller and smaller back in the day, and there’s a reason why phones are getting larger today. Back when we had button-covered flip phones, portability was the name of the game. But once the iPhone hit the market, non-Apple phone makers were tasked with finding a way to persuade customers toward something different. To that end, we’re seeing LTE become a focal point of manufacturers, and larger screens are not only a by-product of that, but they are seen as an additional selling point.

An LTE radio requires bigger hardware, period. It’s a larger radio, to start, but also requires a larger battery. With that, displays get larger and since the iPhone has one of the most pixel-dense displays on the market, competitors need something (anything) that competes directly with that. It’s easier to go big than to build a more pixel-dense display, and the big screens mesh well with adding other features like LTE and extending battery, so that’s where OEMs are headed.

But if we keep encouraging them, phones will keep getting bigger. The Galaxy S III, a phone that I’ve been excited about since the day the S II launched, is rumored to have a 4.8-inch display. This nearly ruins it for me, and the phone’s only saving grace right now is that it’s the Galaxy S III and I can’t help but give it a chance.

If you have the hands for it, then by all means, go get yourself a Note or a GalNex or that giant Galaxy S III when it’s available. But for the rest of us, the 99 percent if you will, don’t feel suckered into getting a giant phone just because it’s a flagship.

HTC has some beautiful smaller phones coming out like the One V (with a 3.7-inch display) and the One S (4.3-inch), and the Nokia Lumia 800 and 900 are both very appealing options for anyone considering Windows Phone. Oh, and the iPhone is always a good choice too.

All I’m saying is that if we continue to get pushed into buying big phones, OEMs will only continue to compete on screen size, and we’ll all eventually be walking with tablet-sized phones to our faces.

And to me, that look is so over.

Alright. So you have your new iPad. You’re breathing easy knowing that the hectic, crazy part is over and you can simply relax and browse the interwebs on that stunning Retina display.

But not so fast. The iPhone rumor mill started picking up the pace before the iPad was even announced, and now that big brother tablet is out and about, speculation is revving up. Today, the rumors include a 4.6-inch Retina display on the next-gen iPhone, as well as 4G LTE connectivity.

Pulling from a Korean newspaper called Maeil Business Newspaper, Reuters is reporting that “Apple has decided on the bigger 4.6-inch display for its next iPhone and started placing orders to its suppliers.” By suppliers, we assume that references LG and Samsung within Korea, but the unnamed sources declined to confirm.

There are also rumors of a 4-inch iPhone display that have been swirling around for much longer. This seems much more realistic to me. Making a 4.6-inch display would mean that the size of the iPhone itself would be much larger than it currently is. John Gruber of Daring Fireball agrees with me:

Longer and wider? Sounds like bullshit. I can see Apple putting a bigger display on a device of the same size. I can’t see them making a bigger device.

A 4-inch display could possibly fit on to the iPhone at its current size, especially considering the fact that the next-gen precious will probably undergo a redesign of some sort.

Then we have the matter of 4G LTE connectivity to deal with. This is pretty… duh. If Apple felt comfortable enough to put LTE on the iPad, they should feel alright about slapping it in the iPhone. Of course, by the time the iPhone launches, AT&T’s 4G LTE network should be much more built out, and Verizon’s should be much more reliable.

But if connecting the dots doesn’t seem firm enough for you, the folks over at iDownloadBlog have something a bit more substantial. After receiving screenshots and detailed information from iOS 5.1 from a tipster, they replicated the 5.1 jailbreak on an iPhone 4 using iFile.

Come to find, certain strings in iOS 5.1 (which do not reside in iOS 5.0.1) make reference to 4G LTE connectivity. Yeah, yeah, I know. The iPad has 4G LTE and runs iOS 5.1, so of course there will be mention of 4G. But, before you rush to the comments section to call me an idiot, check out this screen grab:

“Enabling 4G will end your phone call. Are you sure you want to enable 4G?”

I’m sure, Apple. Let’s do this.

Privacy and security issues have been at the forefront of tech news this week, with The New York Times reporting on loopholes in two major mobile operating systems — Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android — that allow apps to access much more personal smartphone content than most users realize.

Superstar security researcher Ashkan Soltani (his résumé includes work with the Federal Trade Commission and The Wall Street Journal and giving testimony in front of Congress about mobile privacy) was in San Francisco this week speaking at the RSA Conference, so yesterday afternoon he came by the TCTV studio to dig a bit deeper into how safe smartphones are today and whether things are getting better.

In short? It’s complicated. But Soltani has clever and compelling ways of describing what’s going on, which made for a pretty fascinating discussion. You can watch the whole interview above; here are just a couple of his points:

Smartphones aren’t as smart as you think

This part of our chat happened off-camera, but Soltani has come up with an interesting analogy: Smartphones today are like toddlers who don’t understand etiquette. Just like a four-year-old who overhears you saying that Aunt Helen is fat (and repeats your statement to Aunt Helen the next time he sees her), mobile operating system software is not yet mature enough to understand that you may want an app to access some of your photos, but not others. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but the real problem is that most average users think their smartphones are a lot smarter than they really are — and are surprised to find out otherwise.

Context is key

But as toddlers grow up, they come to understand that certain information is meant to be shared only with certain people. According to Soltani, smartphone software should evolve in a similar way, learning to keep more data in context. Right now, the only data that smartphones understand to keep private is location data. Going forward, things like photos and texts could start to be treated with more consideration. Even as smartphone security gets more sophisticated, though, average users would do well to be more wary with what they share with their devices.

These are the early days

Even though it may be hard to remember life without your iPhone, Soltani said, it’s important to remember that they’ve only been around for four-and-a-half years (which ties in well with the toddler comparison.) That means that we’re in the very early days of reaching a consensus on where the privacy and security boundaries should be. For comparison, Soltani brought up the car industry: The earliest versions of the Ford Model T were popular but also very dangerous, and it took decades for regulations such as drivers licenses, seat belts, and air bags to create some structure around the industry. It could take some time for the same thing to happen with mobile devices.

Vocre was one of the more popular battlefield companies at Disrupt SF 2011; the automagical quality of the app and their excellent on-stage presentation made them one of the frontrunners. They haven’t been idle since then, though, and they’ve taken the advice of some critics who suggested their pay-per-use model was going to turn off users.

They’re releasing a new version of the app today with a few significant improvements, most notably that the app is now free.

The announcement described it as “freemium,” but TechCrunch confirmed with Vocre that it is indeed “free as in beer” and should be from now on for consumers. They are planning an enterprise solution down the road that will have tiered pricing — could be useful for cross-country conference calls, and it will probably be cheaper than a full-time translator.

They also now support 23 languages, inclusive of dialects/regional differences, i.e. Canadian French and French French both count as languages. You may think that’s cheating, but try telling that to the Quebecois.

There’s also a new “tabletop” mode that lets you have a conversation without handing the phone back and forth, and some improvements to the UI. No ads or anything have been added to support the free model; presumably they have monetization ideas

You can download the app here.

Apple may have seen $13 billion in sales in China last year, but apparently those numbers could have been higher if they’d had a bit more faith. The iPhone sold in huge quantities in the markets served by China Unicom, which since October of 2009 has been the only carrier over there to offer it.

Adding a second major carrier to the mix should expand the market and the sales, as it has here in the US, and China Telecom has stepped up to bat. It’s the third-largest carrier after China Mobile and China Unicom, though the situation over there is rather different owing to fact that much of the industry is state-owned. Regardless, it represents a major opportunity for everyone involved.

According to a statement by China Telecom, subscribers will be able to get a free 16 GB iPhone 4S with a two-year contract at 389 yuan per month — around $62. Opting for a three year contract brings that monthly cost down to 289 yuan (~$46). Sounds reasonable, but don’t forget that the average income is much lower, though in the urban areas covered by high-speed data services, things are more comparable.

China Telecom has nearly 40 million subscribers getting 3G data, and the intense interest shown by China Unicom’s subscribers suggests that many of those 40 million will want to make the switch — though they too are likely unsure whether they should wait for summer and the perennially forthcoming next model.

Availability is set for March 9th, just after the rumored March 7th announcement date for the iPad 3. It could be seen as either a coincidence or corroboration of those reports.

Apple has an undeniably big opportunity in China, but it is still facing some considerable challenges. As the iPhone maker claimed the top spot as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor in the last quarter (October-December), it actually slipped in the rankings in China and is now in fifth position after ZTE.

But with Apple only kicking off sales of the iPhone 4S in China this January, it’s arguable whether we will see a delayed reaction from the launch of the new device, or whether longer term this is simply a market that will ultimately gravitate to local brands and cheaper devices in the longer term.

The news comes as Proview — the financially-troubled computer maker that is claiming ownership of the iPad trademark in the country (for a device that looks weirdly like an old iMac) — is starting to demand compensation for its troubles. The company has yet to put a figure on how much it would ask for, but one of its creditors suggested $2 billion.

Meanwhile, Apple has seen a huge amount of attention for the launch of its newest iPhone, the 4S, but that hasn’t been shown to have an affect on its sales in the market just yet. According to regional figures from Gartner (via Reuters), in China, Apple accounted for 7.5 percent of sales in Q4, down from 10.4 percent the quarter before.

That put it into fifth position. Ahead of it: Samsung in the lead with more than 24 percent of sales; Nokia now slipped down to second with less than 20 percent compared to 40 percent a year ago; and ZTE with 11 percent.

Analysts, for now, seem to think that the iPhone 4S will not have as big an impact on sales in China as it has in other markets, where the launch of the device in Q4 catapulted Apple to the top of the charts.

One of the key issues is price: the rule of thumb is for a handset to cost about 70 percent of the average monthly salary; the iPhone, selling for 4,988 yuan ($792), is twice the monthly salary. This pricing metric is not one that has gone unnoticed by companies like Huawei, whose smartphones can sell for a quarter of that amount.

Another has been the fact Apple is still only shipping with one carrier — China Unicom — limiting distribution and, crucially, the amount of devices that are getting sold with carrier subsidies on that price. There have long been reports that the country’s third-largest carrier, the CDMA carrier China Telecom, will soon get added to that list.

This is all still, ultimately, a moving target that will need more time to be played out: China now has 1 billion mobile users, but only around 102 million of them are using smartphones. That means there’s still a long way to go before this market saturates, slows down, and becomes more predictable.

Whenever you see those photos and stories of the crazy crowds at Apple stores in China, they seem to always be about the launch of a new iPhone. But if Apple has its way, soon those masses will be clamoring for something else as well: Mac computers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, speaking earlier this week at the Goldman Sachs conference, noted that China accounted for $13 billion in sales last year for his company, and in that time, sales of Mac computers in China went up by 100 percent.

We don’t know exactly what that means in terms of how actual unit sales of Macs compared to other products like the iPhone; but whatever it is, today we saw that the Mac market in China definitely means something to Apple.

As MG pointed out earlier today in his overview of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple is putting a significant amount of new features into the OS specifically for the Chinese market, bringing Mohammed closer to the Mountain, as it were.

They include more flexible input for Chinese characters — including the ability to switch between English and Chinese more readily — and a number of options that integrate Apple more closely with popular local Internet services.

Baidu, currently China’s most popular search engine, is becoming a built-in search option in Safari. The popular video sharing services Tudou and Youku will be part of Apple’s “Share Sheets” to post videos to the web. Similarly QQ, 163 and 126, which are options in Mail, Contacts and Calendar; while Sina weibo, a Twitter-like service, will be integrated should a user want to do a bit of microblogging.

What’s interesting about the Chinese market, as it has developed in mobile, is that users have found workarounds for official services to get the services that they want, when they want them.

That has been a prevalent issue, for example, with Android, with forked versions of the OS and many competing app stores vying for consumers’ attention. That’s led to an uneven experience, and nothing in the way of benefits for Google, with no proceeds from app sales or advertising around them.

In its first foray into making an OS local, Apple appears to be trying to take a more cautious, more controlled approach to the situation. It is looking to give its users what they most want, so that they don’t feel the need to look elsewhere for it, such as in jailbroken app stores.

That has also appeared to be the direction Apple has been moving with iOS services in China, too. Back in November, the company began to accept payments in Chinese yuan in its App Store: previously users would have needed credit cards that processed in dollars to make app purchases. That would have cut out many users who would have only been able to use free apps legally. And, as with other kinds of piracy, that would have contributed to a large black market for paid apps.

The China story for Apple also dovetails nicely with the fact that OS X is getting ever-closer to iOS in its functionality, with a very close association between the two products for Chinese consumers. In an interview earlier today with the WSJ, Tim Cook highlighted how the popularity of the iPhone has led to stronger sales of the Mac line of computers.

“They know about Apple and what Apple stands for,” said Cook. “Then they search out and look for the Mac.” At the Goldman Sachs conference this week, he said that this was a progression of the halo effect that had once been associated with the iPod and the Mac.

Given how central the mobile phone has been to China’s leap into the digital world — 1 billion mobile users, with 102 million on smartphones — it may not ever be the case that Macs sell as well as iPhones in China (or other markets, for that matter). But as Apple ties users ever more into multi-screen services like iCloud, that Mac will be just as important as the iPhone, and whatever else Apple has up its sleeve, in getting users to stay loyal.

We’ve seen handset makers like HTC, LG and Nokia all warning of declines in smartphone sales. But if there is a slowdown affecting some, it’s not because people are not buying smartphones; it’s because they’re all buying iPhones.

Figures out from Gartner today say that smartphone sales totalled 149 million units in Q4 2011 — 47.3 percent higher than the same quarter a year ago, led by none other than Apple’s iPhone, which its analysts noted “saved” the smartphone market after two quarters of declining sales.

The mobile device market is also getting ever closer to a tipping point in terms of smartphone dominance: Gartner notes that they accounted for one-third of all mobile sales in the last quarter worldwide. The analysts predict that in 2012 smartphone sales will continue their march, growing by 39 percent compared to only seven percent growth for feature phones.

That is significant in that it shows how strong smartphones are playing in developing markets as well. In developed markets like the U.S., UK and Japan smartphone sales have been close to or already outpacing feature phone sales for a little while now.

Platforms. Moving away from specific vendors, Google’s Android platform grew even more dominant, and accounted for more than 50 percent of all smartphones sold, up from 30 percent a year ago. Apple’s iOS and bada from Samsung were the only other two platforms that grew in market share, with the rest all continuing to see big declines, including the Windows Phone platform from Microsoft, which accounted for 1.9 percent of sales.

Apple. On the strength of tremendous iPhone sales in the U.S. and Europe, Apple became the world’s biggest smartphone vendor, with a 23.8 percent share of all sales in Q4, which works out to unit sales of 35.5 million smartphones.

Apple is now also the third-largest mobile phone vendor in the world overall. That’s notable especially considering that the two vendors ahead of Apple, Samsung and Nokia, are also selling a range of much less expensive devices.

But one word of caution to note here, too: Gartner doesn’t expect Apple to have a blockbuster quarter like this again soon — saying that a lot of the boost was due to pent-up demand from consumers awaiting the newest model of the iPhone, which turned out to be the iPhone 4S. Famous last words or the canary in the coalmine?

Losers. More bad news for LG, Sony Ericsson, RIM and the newest charm on Google’s bracelet, Motorola: all saw declines in market share — not only because of fierce competition from Apple and Samsung in mature markets but also because of price pressure in developing markets from the likes of ZTE and Huawei.

The sub-$100 smartphone is only going to become a more prevalent theme in the future, and companies like RIM will have to address that if they hope to claw back some of their old leadership. (Yes, there is an irony here: Apple doesn’t dabble in cheap devices — putting aside handset subsidies that carries put on a range of devices, including the iPhone.)

What of Nokia? Still on top in the overall rankings by a good margin, and not losing nearly as much steam as you would have expected, given all the doom and gloom that gets reported. Its share is now at 23.4 percent compared to 27.1 a year ago. Indeed, in its last quarterly earnings, Nokia actually showed quite good results for sales of its feature devices, even as it saw huge smartphone declines. Samsung inched up a couple of percentage points to 19.4 percent of all sales — a testament to its strong Android-based smartphone sales and its equally strong line of feature phones built using its proprietary bada OS.