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Props to Gizmodo.com for the image. Great site.

I know we haven’t been updating much, but there’s been a ton of stuff going on in the Pwnagepickle HQ. Now, time for what you’re reading this for. Apple just announced the iPhone 3GS, a new update to the iPhone line with double the memory and more features for a base price of $199. There’s also Apple’s older Phone 3G that they’re willing to keep on the market, for a cheaper price. While, at Palm HQ, John Rubinstein, also known as father of the iPod, brewed up what could be a device that could bring Palm, called the Pre. Its most loved features are the physical keyboard, meshing of accounts (Synergy), and the easy app multitasking. T-mobile’s newest Android phone has been leaked and the specs are already out, thanks to Vodafone, who grabbed the so called HTC Magic earlier this year. It’s a big step from the G1 in terms of form factor, quality, and just looks. RIM also got some ‘oohs; and ‘ahhs’ with it’s first ever touchscreen Balckberry, labeled the ‘Storm’. The only major smartphones left are just the flimsy ones running Windows Mobile and Symbian, but those aren’t very ’satisfying’ choices to the common intelligent human. The question, though, is, which one should you buy?

Gizmodo created a article similar to this, but I just wanted to plant my own opinion and a little more inbiased info on this matter. Here is Gizmodo’s comparison chart, as shown:

The hardware specs tend to be what the carriers and makers boast the most about the phone they’re trying to sell. The first 3 phones got internal storage for their memory, while the last phones tend to use microSD card. Let’s hope T-mobile is as good of a sport as Verizon and offer a 8GB+ card with their phone. In terms of being a smartphone, Apple and Palm got it right, because as little mini computers, we need a good amount of space. Most microSD cards are a little too much to spend on after buying a an expensive phone. Just have it built in. It makes the customer’s life easier. But software matters the most. If you got jesus-phone, in terms of hardware, with Windows Mobile running on it, most wouldn’t buy it, if they were in their right mind:

In other words, the Pre is really slick and it’s multitasking ability is great, but their app store lacks items and the SDK is restrictive. The iPhone claims ease of use with it’s great multi-touch and popular app store, but is restrictive on the app content and lacks good multitasking. The Magic and the Storm have an attitude of ‘Do whatever the fuck you want’ when it comes to apps. It isn’t really restrictive, which is great, but the app stores, like Palm’s, lack content. Only Android has a good enough amount to compete with Apple’s app store. Both phones lack multi-touch, but Androids is a very robust platform, and the Blackberry OS never fails business men and women.

If a customer were convinced not to buy one of these phones, it most likely would be because of the carriers:

After looking at this chart, I can make the conclusion that Sprint and T-Mobile have the best prices on their phones. In terms of service though, Sprint and Verizon are the best, according to where I live (Chicago). AT&T is overpriced and actually has a slower network than it says. T-Mobile has the slowest out of all 4, but it still handles user traffic a lot more well than AT&T. Sprint’s Everything plan gives the Pre the biggest bang for the buck, and the Everything plan includes every single service Sprint offers (That’s mobile TV, AT&T! TV on your phone. Such a fucking fast network, isn’t it, guys?). The Storm and the 3GS pretty much tie for most expensive, and if T-mobile or Sprint has some low life service in your area, just wait when Verizon is rumored to get the Pre next year, and AT&T will probably have an Android soon. If AT&T has crappy service where you live, you’re out of luck ’till around 2012. That’s when AT&t’s contract with Apple is over, so you might get an iPhone on T-Mobile, if T-mobile wants it…

Would you rather have none of these phones? Or maybe one we didn’t list? Just list it in the coments with your reasons!

Google's logo

Thanks to Chrome and its subsequent pairing with Android, Google will extend beyond being the No. 1 search engine to being the premier Web applications provider in the world by 2018. Its application development for mobile and wireless devices will ramp up. Microsoft struggles to keep up but is very much alive. What, you didn’t expect us to say Chrome would kill Microsoft and Windows, did you? Sorry.Google turns the Big 10 years old on Sept. 7 and there are no shortage of stories about what the company has achieved in a decade, as well as comparisons to how Google fared compared to Microsoft’s first 10 years. 

As the leading search engine and the best executor of search advertising on the Web, Google earns about $16.5 billion in annual sales, its stock sells at $450 and the company boasts a market cap of $142 billion.

The Chrome Wars 

The most obvious place to start is with Google’s Chrome Web browser, which took 1 percent of the browser market within its first day of release. 

What will happen if more and more people choose Chrome over IE? There is no easy answer to that question. Media and bloggers like to say Chrome will break Windows but the fact is that you can’t get to the browser without having Windows or Linux boot up your machine. 

Here’s what I believe. Instead of going to Microsoft Office for word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, users will increasingly go first to Chrome on Windows, Linux and Mac machines, and then to Gmail, and other Google Apps, such as Docs. 

This will happen in the consumer sector, but thanks to new apps such as Google Video for businesses and increased reliability from Google’s cloud infrastructure, businesses will begin to live on the Web, too. 

This is already starting in small businesses but medium and large enterprises will start to adopt Google within 10 years. Internet Explorer will be rendered irrelevant as Chrome becomes the new IE and Google Apps becomes the new Office.

What will happen to Microsoft? Microsoft will revitalize Windows by battling back with Live Mesh and will look to pursue the mobile space, but as Microsoft Watch’s Joe Wilcox noted, the software giant is well behind in this area.

Chrome Comes to Android

Chrome is a hit, but Google co-founder Sergey Brin has also said Chrome will slip into Android.

Chrome and Android share the same WebKit rendering engine. With Google bringing the speedy JavaScript virtual machine from Chrome to Android, expect blazing fast access to Web applications. 

In the next few years, Google will successfully map the Chrome desktop experience to Android phones, which start to challenge Apple’s iPhone for quality user experience and mobile market share. A two-horse race for mobile Web consumption ensues between Google and Apple. 

Nokia and other phone makers will continue to make phones but their software will be supplanted by Chrome and other Google Web apps. 

Microsoft Windows Mobile market share begins to decline. Users will continue to access Chrome and Google Search and Apps from Android phones. 

The conversation around Google’s search ad business on the desktop remains strong, but Google begins to look less like a one-trick pony as Chrome and Android open up more mobile ad opportunities for Google.

OpenSocial, YouTube

OpenSocial becomes more prevalent on the Web, with programmers using the APIs to build applications that users can take with them to multiple Web sites. 

As an open-source project ceded to the greater Web community, this is not a key financial play for Google, but ties in to the company’s push to get more users online.

More users online, as Google likes to say, is good for Google because that means more people will be seeing Google advertisements. 

Unfortunately, at 100 million-plus users and counting, Facebook is and will be viewed as the premier social network. Facebook will benefit from advertising on its network.

Just as Google has shut Microsoft and others out of search advertising, Facebook will shut Google and others out of the majority of social ad market share. Microsoft, by virtue of its relationship with Facebook, may have an in here. 

Google, meanwhile, will ratchet up its display advertising focus by selling millions of ads on YouTube, the premier video-sharing site. Google begins to eat share from Yahoo’s display ad business. Or will it be Microhoo’s display ad business? 

2018

After laying the foundation for Chrome, Android and Google Apps with a vibrant search ad business, Google becomes the dominant Web applications company, powering both consumer and businesses, thanks to great strides in cloud computing reliability and security. 

Rumors of Microsoft’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Microsoft’s Web presence remains relatively small compared to that of Google. Windows continues to improve, and despite Google’s and the media’s attempts to lay it to rest, the OS remains the dominant desktop operating system. 

Microsoft finds traction with Live Mesh among consumers, most of whom are leveraging it through their mobile computing devices. It’s on-premise desktop software business declines thanks to Google Apps, but shops continue to use both Web apps for productivity and traditional Microsoft Apps. 

If Microsoft has 85 to 95 percent of that desktop software today, it will be more like 60 percent in 10 years.  

However, this might not mean much. By 2018, BlackBerrys, iPhones and Android smart phones will have gotten so advanced that they replace PCs andlaptops both in the consumer sector and in some businesses. Windows Mobile fades, while PC sales shrink. 

Ultimately, we will look back on 2008 as the year Google began to seriously derail Microsoft’s attempts to create a major Internet presence. Meanwhile, Facebook and other sites will begin to challenge Google in ways we can’t even begin to imagine yet. 

One thing’s for sure; our world will be a mobile one for work and play.

[info courtesy of eweek.com]

[pic courtesy of engadget and imobile.]

Engadget got the inside pics of some secret spy shots of the dream, in it’s T-mobile costume. Without Mr. Blurry cam too! These pics match the FCC specs and leaked videos, but there has been no pictures that match the detail of these. The phone looks good but not excellent. The keyboard looks really nice, but the metal design reminds me of those metal squares on airplaine seats on the arm rests (Random, I know. That comment isn’t negative or positive though). Head on over here to see more pics.

While we can’t confirm the authenticity, several details including that arcing base certainly dovetail nicely with the images found in the original FCC filing. It’s also a near-perfect match to that early reference design seen kicking around the Googleplex courtesy of Andy Rubin. While not obvious before, we can clearly see that the arc belongs to the handset’s rigid, non-sliding “chin” with lots of logos from HTC, T-Mobile, and Google fighting for visibility.

Notably, the right-most image contains measurements which can be applied to the rest of scale model as well. This confirms the 115 x 55-mm height and width shown by the FCC yesterday as well as a new, approximate, 16.35-mm depth after applying the calipers. That would make it fatter (as expected) than the 12.3-mm iPhone but skinnier (and a hair wider) than the 18.1-mm HTC Touch Pro and 17-mm Xperia X1. Not bad. Now let’s get to it boys, else there won’t be much left to announce in September.

[Courtesy of engadget.com]