FaceTime vs Skype Video Calling for iPhone Compared!

Now that Skype for iPhone has support for video calling, Lifehacker has gone on to compare the two of the most popular video calling options available for iPhone users, FaceTime and Skype, to see which one has better audio and visual quality.

The test compares video calling over WiFi from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 (or iPod touch 4G), and iPhone 4 to a Mac using both FaceTime and Skype video calling technologies. The test also shows video calling quality of Skype over AT&T 3G network as it has official support to work on it.

Opera To Show Off Browser For Windows 7 Tablets, Netbooks At CES

Opera Software on Monday teased a preview of Opera for Tablets, a custom browser for hybrid touch devices, which it said would be debuting at CES this week.

In a video, embedded below, the company briefly showed the product in action on an Android tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab to be more specific.

TechCrunch has now learned that the company will also show off some Windows 7 tablets and netbooks running its latest browser at CES – we’ll see if the CrunchGear team can shoot some videos of those at the annual show.

Garmin releases StreetPilot for iPhone

Garmin just released StreetPilot for iPhone, the newest addition to their mobile line-up of GPS apps. The app boasts a lot of the same features nüvi owners already enjoy. StreetPilot has up to date map support for both the US and Canada. All maps and directions are pulled from Garmin’s servers so you can expect the same quality directions as a native GPS unit. Since maps are pulled from the server, the app only takes up around 7 MB of space on your phone. Hit the jump for a few initial impressions, some screens, and a list of features.

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Now Has 5,000 Applications and Games

As far as milestones go, reaching a certain number of applications in your digital storefront is one of them. And when you reach 5,000, at a pretty breakneck pace no less, that’s certainly something for any company to celebrate. As we’re sure that the Windows Phone 7 team at Microsoft is doing, with news that the Marketplace is reaching that milestone by the end of the day on Tuesday, with 5,000 applications and games available for purchase.

The Top 40 iPhone Apps of 2010

Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Alex Ahlund, the former CEO and founder of AppVee and AndroidApps, which were acquired by mobile application directory Appolicious. You can read his previous iPhone app picks here and here

The iTunes App Store is huge. More than 300,000 apps huge. I’ve watched this monster start from nothing and turn into a billion-dollar industry in only a few short years. We’ve been approaching this point for some time now, but it’s more apparent than ever that app exposure is of critical importance. A healthy majority of iOS app users discover new applications directly from their device as opposed to using iTunes. If you look specifically at the iPhone, the amount of real estate for discovery is only available to a very small percentage of the total apps.

There are currently 20 overall categories, with Games offering an additional 20 subcategories. Each subcategory is broken into three lists and displays a max of 100 apps on the iPhone. Throw in a small number from the Top 25 and Featured lists and you wind up with roughly 12,000 apps being shown at one time. This works out to only about 4% of all apps that receive visibility. One can browse beyond this number on iTunes, but that quickly becomes an overwhelming, laborious task.

VLC Player Coming To Android

The incredibly popular VLC Player is finally coming to Android after months of hard work by the open source project developers. Originally a desktop media center for Linux, Windows, and Mac, this versatile player will bring many new video-playing features to our beloved OS including a wide variety of formats such as DivX and Dolby TrueHD. The lead developer in the project, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, has confirmed that it will hit the Android Market in "just a few weeks", which means that Android will be the first mobile platform to have a version of this software finally follow iOS and get its own port (thanks, Mikeyy). This was made possible through various NDK (native development kit) improvements found in Gingerbread.

Google Maps Android App Goes 3D

If you have an Android 2.0+ device head to the Android Market to get the updated Google Maps if you haven’t already got it. The latest features includes 3D buildings, 3D tilting & rotation plus better map caching as seen in Andy Rubin’s demo of Honeycomb Motorola tablet. Map caching is most convenient if you’re using turn-by-turn navigation and loose connection for some reason (i.e. in a tunnel, rural area, in the mountains, etc.) the app will still be able to operate normally as more map data is cached. The maps have a smaller footprint as well to easily store the data. You can see from the vid the cool things you can do to control the map like 3D compass rotation with your physical body, see Google Earth-like 3D buildings, two-finger swipe to tilt or rotate the map. Rub that in your iPhone friends faces as they don’t have this feature yet!

Facebook updated to 1.5, FINALLY gets Facebook Chat, Push Notifications

It seems the Facebook for Android application has finally become all-encompassing, with the long-awaited features of chat and push notification finally making their way onto the Android platform. This is certainly a welcome addition to the Android application, as the lack of these features have been a gripe of many Android users for a long time. After spending a few minutes with the application, both the chat integration and the notification features seem to be done pretty well.

Check out the screens below to preview the changes, or just head over to the market and update the app to test it out for yourself. Not using the Facebook app yet? Is the addition of these features enough to convince you to start/switch from a 3rd party application? Sound off below!

First Look of the New Android Market(Video)

If you haven’t or couldn’t update your phone to the new and more polished Android Market, then check out our quick first look below, so that you can see exactly what you are missing out on.  And that was a rude way to start a Monday morning.  It really is awesome though.

Google Latitude Comes to the App Store

Google today officially debuted its Google Latitude application on the App Store, bringing a native iOS app experience to users of the company's location-sharing service for the first time.

With Google Latitude, see where your friends are right now. Latitude lets you stay in touch with your friends and family by making it easy to share where you are and see each other on a map.

With Latitude, you can:

- See your friends on a map - find out who's nearby and meet up.

- Share your location continuously with whomever you choose - help friends and family stay in touch with you, even when you can’t take out your phone.

- Control your privacy - share only city-level location, hide your location, or turn off background updating at any time.

Google Maps 5 Demo'd on a Phone

We saw the upcoming Google Maps 5 demonstrated on an unannounced tablet-device running Android Gingerbread earlier this week. We also heard that this version of Maps will run on phones as well as tablets, and that it will be available "in a few days". Today we got a pretty good demo of Google Maps 5 running on an Android-powered phone, over a cellular network (not Wi-Fi). 

Likely the most important breakthrough in this iteration of the Maps app is the use of vector data, rather than the bitmap tiles that current and previous versions have used. This requires faster processors, but vectors are significantly smaller than bitmaps, resulting in a significant reduction in required bandwidth. How much smaller? The number being thrown around is version 5 using 1/100th the data as previous versions.

Android Market getting a stealth face lift

It seems that the Android Market is getting a stealth face lift. Some handsets running Froyo are finding an extra tab on the app listings, offering users the chance to search for related or similar applications to the one that you are checking out. Interestingly, the language between devices is a little different. For example, on the Motorola DROID X. the third tab reads "similar" while the HTC EVO 4G says "related".

Gowalla for iPhone adds multi-network check-ins, improved UI, and more

Gowalla isn't the biggest location-based services app out there, but it's definitely worth trying. It is particularly nice now that its iPhone version has been updated to Gowalla 3, adding a host of new features and improvements.

Among those improvements is a one-touch multi-network check-in, allowing you to check in with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Gowalla all at once. Check-in speed is also improved, as Gowalla 3 now predicts your check-in based on your history. It also allows you to start typing your message while it acquires your location.

Angry Birds Seasons for iPhone, iPad now in app store!

Angry Birds Seasons, the Christmas-themed update to Angry Birds Halloween we heard about last week has just now arrived in the iTunes App Store. And from the sounds of things they’re just getting started.

The Android Google Reader app is here!

It’s been a long time coming, but the official Google Reader app for Android is finally here. Let’s jump into the features, shall we?

The app supports all the basics you’d expect like unread counts, friends, sharing, liking, and starring, but it also has a whole lot more, including:

• Multiple accounts
• Synced preferences
• Full subscription features (subscribe and search from your phone)
• Search

Pocket God for Android now available

Been waiting for Pocket God on Android? Wait no longer, as the game is now available on Android for a mere 99 cents. The collaborative effort between Bolt Creative and ngmoco brings the popular iOS game to Android -- think of it as a new Sim City on an island, where the Pygmies are subject to your control. Download link and press release are after the break. Now excuse us while we control a virtual universe for a few hours.

Bolt Creative Teams Up with ngmoco to Bring Pocket God to Android and Windows Phone 7 

Pygmies Discover New Islands, Ready to Please More Gods

How to Unlock iOS 4.2.1 with Ultrasn0w 1.2 [Video Guide]

The iPhone Dev-Team has released the updated version of carrier unlocking tool called Ultrasn0w which can unlock the latest iOS 4.2.1 and 4.1 firmware on iPhone 3GS and 3G on basebands later than 05.13.04. Since iPhone 4 has different baseband OS, It’ll take a little while longer for the Dev Team to unlock it on the latest firmware.

Windows Phone 7 apps are the cheapest, and most are games

Are you prepared for one more reason to love Windows Phone 7? A study by Distimo, an app market analytics researcher, found that WP7 has the cheapest paid apps, at an average of $1.95 each. They also revealed that there is a strong bias towards games, which is in stark contrast to Windows Mobile's app lineup.

Windows Phone 7 paid apps cost an average of $1.95. Compare that to Apple, whose paid apps average $4 each. This is great for the sale of the WP7 OS, particularly considering the contrast with Windows Mobile, whose apps cost an average of $6.27. The next cheapest app market is that of Palm, whose apps cost an average of about $2.30 each.

Angry Birds Christmas Revealed

The Angry Birds news is coming at a fast and furious pace today, as developer Rovio has just confirmed that a Christmas edition of the blockbuster game is inbound; it's likely that this title will be launched on December 11th -- Angry Birds Day -- when we may also hear about the company's plans for a Windows Phone 7 port. Besides hinting at the seasonal title on Twitter -- and changing its icon to a Santa-hat-wearing-red-bird -- Rovio apparently leaked out at least one screenshot from the game, which was first published on MTV3's Finnish site.

Opera Mobile 10.1 for Symbian turns to a brilliant shade of gold

Opera has done a pretty commendable job of keeping its latest, greatest wares up to date on most of the major mobile platforms, and here's another checkbox they can tick: Opera Mobile 10.1 has now gone final for Symbian. Of course, this isn't to be confused with the lighter-weight Opera Mini product that went into beta for Symbian last month -- this is the full package that's capable of operating without a proxy. What's new? Well, the company claims that this version operates some nine times faster than 10.0 did in JavaScript tests thanks to a refreshed JIT compiler, and support for location services is definitely a welcome addition. It's available now for S60 3rd Edition, 5th Edition, and Symbian^3

via Engadget