Gadget Venue

Symbian have launched the Horizon App store that aims to compete against app stores already open by Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Mobile. The Horizon App store went live today along with the first 50 applications. Symbian also have plans to allow 1000’s more applications through the system next year.

The Symbian operating system is used on a lot of phones including many Nokia phones, Samsung, Sony Ericsson etc… and a lot of these companies already have started app stores. Nokia for example, has the Nokia Ovi store. Each of these app stores will support the new Horizon store and integrate offerings in to their stores. [Read more…]

The highly anticipated HTC HD2 has just been unboxed and uploaded to Youtube in the last day. Although the box used is just a temporary box, it’s still good to see the actual phone and what it looks like while booting up etc…

We are still waiting for a HD2 to arrive here and have been told that there are no review units around anywhere just yet… so someone must have a a secret stash of them somewhere… do tell if you are one of those who know.

Items included in the box are a charger, hands free kit along with inline controls as well as a USB cable for charging/syncing. On to the phone it’s self, the most striking feature of the HTC HD2 is the huge screen that the phone has. It measures 4.3 inches and is capacitive as well as being multi-touch. Powering the phone is a 1GHz snapdragon processor to make things run quicker than average. OS wise it runs Windows Phone (WM 6.5) that uses HTC sense style overlay to make things run a little nicer. [Read more…]

Google [GOOG] this morning officially announced that Android 2.0 is now supported in the SDK. Android 2.0 was only first revealed just a couple of weeks back in a surprise video posted by Boy Genius Report and after their preview with it, it was revealed that a number of fantastic updates had been made.

Android 2.0 is also known as Eclair and it comes with a number of updates that allows more seamless integration on the device for contacts, syncing due to new API’s being created to provide a lot more power to the developers. Quick Contact is also capable of being embedded in to applications.

The new Bluetooth API provides a more seamless way of letting phones connect peer-to-peer for gaming which can include screen sharing where graphics on one screen can be seamlessly shifted on to a second phone like a multi-monitor setup. [Read more…]

Sony Ericsson have launched a new page on their site called “whatsnext” which says “Sometimes there’s a thin line between the extraordinary and the magical. Did we cross it? Watch this space on November 3rd.”.

The page indicates a product launch that is more than likely going to be the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 android based phone.

The X10 was previously known as the X3 or Racheal and has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor along with an 8 megapixel camera, HSPA and large touchscreen. [Read more…]

Palm and Sprint have announced that the new Palm Pixi will be made available for purchase on November 15. The phone will cost $99.99 after the usual rebates that require you to mail them in. You will also need to sign a 2 year contract to get the phone.

The phone will be made available in various places including Sprint Stores, Online, Best Buy, Radio Shack as well as Wal-Mart stores in some locations.

A quick overview of technical specs only shows what we already know in that it has a multi-touch screen, a full QWERTY keyboard and is thin in form factor. The Pixi is Palm’s second WebOS device to hit the market after the Palm Pre that was released earlier this year. [Read more…]