The iPhone ViperSmart system is an app that costs $30/year to use and an extra $500 to install kit in your car that allows you to remote start/stop and do other things to your car from anywhere in the world.

Right now the system only works one way in that you tell the car what to do and it does it. This is changing though as SmartStart will now be featuring push notifications that allows the car to feed back information to you regardless of the application being open or not. The push notification system can also let you know if a command failed to execute. [Read more…]

The next Google Android 2.2 update might bring wireless 802.11n to the Nexus One. This has become apparent because of Broadcom and Google [GOOG] releasing new drivers for the wireless chipset that the Nexus One uses.

Up till now and including Android 2.1, Google have not included these drivers in the firmware for Nexus One.

Looking at results of testing from the guys at Android and Me, it certainly seems possible that Google could include this in the next update as those guys managed to get 802.11n working on an Android 2.1 build. Full details of how that was achieved are over on the Android and me site linked above. [Read more…]

We found out today that HTC are not bidding for Palm unfortunately. Reasons for this are quoted below..

“There just weren’t enough synergies to take the deal forward,” said the source, who declined to be identified because the talks were private.

It’s a shame as HTC could have been a perfect fit although the deal obviously goes way beyond what it all looks like on the outside. [Read more…]

Cypress today announced the development of a new finger tracking system called Hover Detection that works in conjunction with TrueTouch. The system allows users to hover their finger over the screen of a phone whereby the phone can track where the finger is hovering and provide information back to the user on the screen. The system will work similar to mouse-over where you can move a mouse over an object on a PC and a status pops up in some cases explaining what the mouse is looking at.

The system is compatible with any TrueTouch capacitive touchscreen built by Cypress. The system aims to give the user an extra degree of control allowing users to scroll around a screen and see what they want to look at before tapping the screen. Another use described by Cypress is a zoom bubble that follows the finger around allowing you to zoom in to information you are pointing at. [Read more…]

We are hearing today that Google Maps Navigation, the free satnav service, could be coming to the Apple iPhone. This hasn’t been confirmed or set in stone yet, but the indications come from comments made by Google [GOOG] saying they are looking at bringing the free navigation software to other platforms.

Apple [AAPL] already uses Google Maps on the iPhone for mapping services, so the possibility of that being converted to a free navigation application is too far out of question.

With Google also bringing Google Maps Navigation to the UK just this week, this also indicates that Google do have plans to expand the service beyond the US and beyond the Android platform. [Read more…]

Patently Apple have found a patent by Apple [AAPL] that runs through a new application called iTravel. iTravel is said to be a system that focuses on matters such as Airport check-in and baggage identification as well as dealing with car rentals, hotels, travel booking and anything else travel related.

The system relies on near field communication (NFC) that seems to be in a few patents recently including the new Apple concert ticket patent.

It appears that NFC could be used in the iPhone 4G / HD that is expected to launch in a few months although it could also indicate that the iPhone that will launch 2011 might have NFC with all these patents getting ready to fully utilise the capabilities of the technology when it arrives in the hardware. [Read more…]

It was earlier this week that Gizmodo released pictures of what is believed to be the official Apple iPhone 4G that is due to launch in June/July this year. Although it isn’t 100% clear that this is going to be the final version of the next gen iPhone, aka iPhone HD, it 99.9% resembles what we will probably see in June or July.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has looked in to the whole iPhone 4G events of this week and covers various details such as how the iPhone left the campus, what the codes resemble on the back and a few other items. [Read more…]

For those of you experiencing bugs with the Google Nexus One, it now appears that Google [GOOG] are not investigating them any more. Instead there bit of advice is to change the orientation of the phone, or move location.

The full message was posted by a Google employee on the Google support forums whereby he said…

“Hey guys,

I’ve seen some recent speculation on this thread about an OTA to improve 3G connectivity and I want to give you an update on the situation.

While we are continuing to monitor user feedback regarding the 3G performance on the Nexus One, we are no longer investigating further engineering improvements at this time.

If you are still experiencing 3G issues, we recommend that you try changing your location or even the orientation of your phone, as this may help in areas with weaker coverage.

-Ry Guy”

[Read more…]

Four other Dell smartphones were unveiled this morning which included three Dell Android handsets and a Dell Windows Phone 7 handset.

The next (and final we believe) is the Dell Aero. The Dell Aero has a launch date of Q2 this year making the launch anytime within the next 2 months.

The technical specs reveal that it will run a 624MHz Marvell processor and have a 3.5 inch capacitive multitouch screen. The device also has handwriting recognition and a capacitive stylus will be included allowing you to scribble on the screen. [Read more…]

Nokia [NOK] have announced financial details of their company that also shows details of how many handsets they have shifted.

The numbers show a drop in cellphone and smartphone sales although this is also an increase when compared to this time last year vs last quarter.

In total the company shifted 107.8 million handsets with 21.5 million of these being smartphones. These were sold in a three month period. [Read more…]

We reported yesterday that Android 2.2 (Froyo) was in the testing stages with a launch date due in the next month or so. Androidandme have pointed out that their stats software (Google Analytics) has already been seeing some traffic from Android 2.2 devices in the last few days as pictured below.

We checked the gadgetvenue statistics and have also noticed a few visitors using the Android 2.2 OS. Androidandme point out that Android builds only get numbered when close to release and with this information showing up in statistics, it appears that it isn’t too far away now. [Read more…]

This morning we wrote about three new Dell Android devices that are due to launch late this year and next year.

The next smartphone we hear of (leaked from Dell) is the Dell Lightning. The Lightning is a Windows Phone 7 device that is a portrait slider. Inside a 1GHz QSD8250 Snapdragon processor is to be found. The screen measures 4.1 inches and is a WVGA format. The screen is OLED.

The Dell Lightning has a 5 megapixel camera that can autofocus. Memory wise it has 1GB of flash, 512MB RAM and 8GB of storage built in that due to Windows Phone 7 requirements will be non user changeable. [Read more…]