Android World Round Up: Wildfire Ups and Downs – Android IPTV – New Optimus Z

Wildfires not burning so bright
As elsewhere, the HTC Wildfire was met by a blaze of enthusiasm in the UK, and yesterday’s news that Android 2.2 for the handset is ready (appearing on launch lists in China) should have stoked the fires even further.

For some though, the flames have been extinguished somewhat, by a backdraft of complaints regarding sporadic crashes. Some sites are suggesting hardware faults and talking of product recalls but Wildfire owners with other carriers seem to be experiencing no such problem. This leads one to think that this is more likely a middleware issue. The handset is currently listed as out of stock at T-Mo’s online store, and we’ll give you more as we get it, of course.

Bratislavan Broadband Broadcast
Slovakian set-top and middleware developer Antik are looking at utilising Android on their IPTV set-top boxes. Plans include users being able to switch between Juice managed podcasts, Google TV and general web content with their phone as a remote controller. Still waiting for Google TV, of course, the company expect to be rolling out the boxes next year.

Koreans get lovely new LG
Only available in South Korea, the LG Optimus Z (pictured)  is LG’s finest Android phone to date with a 480 by 640px capacitive touchscreen, 720px video and a 1GHz snapdragon processor. Shipping with OS 2.1 it is more than capable of running 2.2 when its ready. I particularly like the drag-and-shake file sharing feature and there is no reason to believe that the rest of us might be seeing the Optimus Z soon too – hopefully.

Android helping UK economy
Despite pessimistic forecasts from financial gurus, some areas of the British economy are thriving and in part its thanks to a certain little green robot. Android may not be playing a major part in the recovery but ask Roger Taylor – Chief Exec at The Carphone Warehouse – and he’ll tell you another story. TCW, Europe’s biggest mobile phone retailer, made £794m ($1270m) in the last quarter: nearly 60% of their entire sales revenue for 2009. This is largely down to models such as the HTC Galaxy S and the Sony Ericsson X10s, says Roger, which all appear prominently on their home page.

The Carphone Warehouse – known as The Phone House in some countries are credited with having invented the cheesy, mobile phone TV commercial, way back in 1989.

Tags: android, carphone warehouse, google tv, htc, iptv, Juice, LG, optimus, optimus z, slovakia, south korea, t-mobile, uk, wildfire

Category: General