Starting August 1st this year, Google opened up an Android Developer challenge to see who could come up with the best application. After a few months of developing the results are now in with the winners announced.
The winners of the Android Developer Challenge 2 are firstly an application called SweetDreams that allows you to automatically change your settings to aviod calls at night.
Next is the “What the Doodle!?” application that functions as a real-time online multiplayer game. The idea behind the game is that one player draws out a given phrase and other connected need to guess what is drawn.
Finally in the winners area is WaveSecure that protects the data and privacy of your Android based phone. The application allows you to track the location of your phone, track who is using it. Other features in WaveSecure allow you to remotely lock down your phone as well as back up data, remote wipe your phone and restore data. [Read more…]
The Zii StemCell processor is described as being a system-on-a-chip that runs on an ARM Cortex Chip. The system was designed to power gadgets such as mobile phones along with PMP’s and settop boxes.
Some screen shots were spotted showing the HTC Hero running a yet unlaunched Android 2.1 operating system. The phone is running Sense and screen shots of both portrait and landscape modes can be seen running.
The Camangi WebStation is another Android OS based device in the form of a tablet. The WebStation will be launched next month for a price of $399. Camangi do mention on their site that there is an early bird price for the first 100 buyers of the Android Tablet although it’s not clear if $399 is the early bird price or full price.
Google [GOOG] have announced that Google Maps Navigation is now available in the US for those running Android 1.6 on their phone. The maps software is compatible with most (if not all) 1.6 based devices including the older T-Mobile G1.
A seller on eBay has a prototype Motorola DROID for sale on eBay. Only 5 were ever made according to the seller and they were created strictly for the engineers. The seller also mentions that everything works perfectly including all radios for bluetooth, wireless, calls etc…
If you own an Android phone or other Android OS device then eReader has created a download that allows you to read books from the eReader library.
Samsung announced a new smartphone today called the Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700. The phone is Google [GOOG] android based and runs with an 800MHz processor. Although not quite the speed of the Snapdragon processors running at 1GHz it’s still a bump up from other android based phones that tend to run a little slower.
Last Friday saw the release of the Motorola DROID which is the first smartphone to run the Android 2.0 OS. Reports are showing that perhaps 100,000 phones were sold in the first weekend of it’s launch. Verizon at the weekend had 200,000 DROID handsets made available and most of the stores sold at least half the stock indicating that perhaps 100,000 were sold in total.
Just a few weeks ago we mentioned that Adobe had launched 
LG have announced that they are creating a new Android based phone that will run a SnapDragon processor. The phone is set to launch in about 5 – 6 months time in Q2 of 2010. Other than known what OS it will run and that it will be powered by a SnapDragon processor, there isn’t really anything known just yet.
Both the HTC DROID Eris and Motorola DROID are now available over on the Verizon store as of today. The Motorola DROID has been the phone to get the majority of the spotlight over the last few weeks and rightly so as it runs the Google Android 2.0 operating system that is a big upgrade from 1.5/1.6 that other phones have. One of the big features of Android 2.0 is Google Maps Navigation that provides a free turn by turn sat nav system for Android 2.0 based phones.
