The latest release of Sybase Afaria, a mobile enterprise BI software, now supports iPad and Android devices. With this new ability to secure and manage iPad and Android, Sybase extends its ubiquitous device support to a list that includes iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry.

The new ability to manage Android devices from the Afaria console, enables IT to configure devices, control password policies, perform remote kill and more. The expanded management capabilities include the ability to perform a remote kill for iPhone and iPad and the expanded security to block unknown or non-compliant devices from accessing corporate assets for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms.

The Milestone is a large touchscreen smartphone with a slide-out keyboard and runs on the Android operating system — an open source platform spearheaded by Google. While the hardware is almost identical to the ‘Droid’ that was launched exclusively for CDMA telecom provider Verizon in the US six months ago, The Milestone launched in India is the first in the world to have the latest edition of the OS ie. version 2.1 installed. Considering that the Droid has only recently started getting the 2.1 upgrade in the US and other parts of the world, Indian users for once have a first-look at a truly high-end smartphone.

The Milestone stands out among the flurry of recent Android phone launches from other manufacturers because of sheer build quality. It’s got the right mix of metal, plastic and rubber with a streak of gold at the back thanks to a rather large external speaker on the rear panel.

The sliding keyboard mechanism is smooth but stops short of feeling like it could become loose with excessive usage. A micro USB port on one side, a dedicated camera key and volume controls on the other and a 3.5mm audio jack next to the power/lock key on the top, are the external add-ons.

The only glitch in the aesthetics seems to be that a little portion of the sliding keyboard sticks out below the touchscreen panel and seems to serve no real purpose. The backlit keyboard itself is a dream to use with extremely well-made keys that have a soft touch and although they’re not as large as the ones of Nokia Communicators, they’re easy to get used to even if one has large fingers.

Under the left extreme of the screen and the keypad ending (with the P key on the topmost line) under the right side. In Milestone’s case, the keypad is slightly off centre with respect to the actual display. The screen itself is a 3.7” high resolution (480 x 854) display though not of the brilliant new OLED kind that one sees on the Google Nexus One for instance.

Most Android fans have seen the videos of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and its silky user interface. Likewise its exciting specs (which include a 4-inch display, a Snapdragon processor, and an 8.1-megapixel camera) are widely known.The phone’s hardware is adorable while the software is buggy and slow at times. And faced with shortcomings such as the absence of multitouch and the omission of an Android 2.0 (Éclair) upgrade, X10 faces competition from the likes of Motorola Droid and the Google Nexus One.

Elegant Design

The X10’s design unmistakably marks the smartphone as a Sony: Like its sibling, the Windows Mobile-based Xperia X1, this handset has an eye-catching sleek profile, an elegant curved body, and a minimalist black-and-chrome color scheme. Measuring 4.7 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches, the X10 is slightly larger than most smartphones (the Nexus One, for instance, measures 4.5 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches) and feels slightly awkward to hold. It weighs a manageable 4.8 ounces.

The Android twist

Like Motorola and HTC, Sony Ericsson developed its own proprietary user interface (which it calls UX, for User eXperience–also code-named “Rachael”) to run over Android. Sony Ericsson announced before Mobile World Congress that both the X10 and its younger sibling, the X10 Mini, will initially ship with Android OS version 1.6, but the operating system will eventually be upgradable. You can read the company’s full explanation at the Sony Ericsson Product Blog.

8-Megapixel Camera

The Face Recognition bugs aside, the X10’s 8.1-megapixel camera with LED flash is a winner. The intuitive interface comes with a handful of useful features such as touch-to-focus and smile detection. Recent photos appear at the bottom of the screen so you can easily review and delete them.

Performance

The X10 truly shines at Web browsing, thanks to its speedy 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Media-rich Web pages loaded quickly over AT&T’s 3G network. Smooth scrolling and the 4-inch display combine to put the X10 on a par with the iPhone 3GS and the Nexus One for surfing the Web.

Sony Ericsson should price the X10 competitively with the unlocked Nexus One. We might have a money roller here…

LG recently launched LG GW620,the first Android phone to India. The handset is priced at Rs 16,490.

LG GW620 has been launched keeping in view the type of customers who wish to do multitasking. The users of LG GW620 can perform an array of tasks be it business, social networking, travel or entertainment related.

LG GW620 is being touted as a user friendly Smartphone. Users have an option of using the LG S-Class interface as well other than the Android menu option which is standard. This they can do by using the dual boot option. Since the phone is powered by Android, it gives users an access to over 20000 downloadable applications.

With SNS technology, LG makes life easy for social networking buffs. The phone has instant messaging facility bringing your contacts close to you no matter where you are. Its photography loving customers can now enjoy the add on features of its 5 MP camera. Auto face tagging enables easy recognition of faces and face to action feature of the handset makes a photo face the gateway of all the activities.

With LG GW620, the ever busy class of Business users can now access their emails instantly with Real-time push email alerts. There are a lot more features in store as well. Side slider 5 line QWERTY keypad makes typing easier bringing home a PC experience. The four directional keys and full range of numbers ensure that faster messaging is a child’s play. Thanks to the Moxier line of Smartphone products users can gain corporate access to features such as Calendar and contacts. Not only this, with the help of another work related suite users can work on word, excel and pdf files as well.

The only disadvantage that LG GW620 offers is that it has the very basic version of Android 1.5.Since Google has upgraded the Android version , not all exciting features of the Android technology are accessible. But since it’s the first Android device in India , this fact can be overlooked.

Orkut is ready to roll on mobile phones with Android.You can now stay connected to your orkut friends wherever you go –scrap notifications,upload photos to your orkut albums, and have your phonebook synced with your orkut friends’ phone numbers and status messages. Orkut for Android lets you stay in touch with pals through…

Simply add the list of your orkut friends as a live folder on your home screen, and you’ll be able to browse through your friends list even when not under data network coverage. The live folder also lets you communicate (via call, scrap or SMS) with your friends in a single click. To install a live folder, click “Menu > Add > Folders > Orkut” on your Android device’s homescreen after installing the orkut for Android application.

You will also get instant scrap notifications on your Android device.The notifications will appear on your Android device notification bar; clicking on notifications will take you to your scrapbook page.

To install the orkut for Android application visit Android Market from your Android device and search for “orkut” under the social applications category. You can also directly scan the QR code below to install it. Note that this application is available only for Android devices running version 1.6 or higher.

Hope to see you on orkut for Android soon!

Hughes Systique has developed a proof-of-concept telepresence application for Digital TV sets and set-top boxes powered by the Android operating system.

Hughes has partnered with Home Jinni Inc., and has built this application as a plugin for the HomeJinni ConnecTV media center, which it claims to be the world’s first social media center and ‘Connected TV’ framework for Android-powered TV sets, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes.

Home Jinni provides white label solutions for end user programming and control of the digital home. It uses an Android application framework for building UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), DLNA (Digital Living Network Appliance) and DPWS (Devices Profile for Web Services) home area network applications and an Android framework for integrating consumer electronics with IMS and Open IPTV networks.

We believe that consumer choice is one of the most critical components to ensuring a rich and seamless client experience

Microsoft is continuing to buy its way into the mobile search market with a new deal with Motorola, which has agreed to use Microsoft’s Bing search on Motorola’s Android phones.The deal, which is slated to debut on Motorola phones in China, puts Google in a slightly awkward position, because its Google Android platform will be featuring a mobile search engine supplied by its archrival Microsoft.

Consumers, however, may presumably install Google’s search engine on Motorola Android phones on their own. Motorola has already announced it will use Yahoo as the presumptive search engine on its Backflip Android phone.By keeping Google’s search engine off its phones slated for marketing in China, Motorola’s use of Motorola’s Bing may be helping Google defuse its censorship dispute with China.

Motorola, which is hoping to ride the popularity of the open architecture of the Android platform to recapture lost cell phone market share, says simply that it is trying to appeal to consumers.

A year ago, Microsoft and Verizon Wireless( a news that we covered, check our prior posts) partnered in a deal to offer Microsoft’s search capability on Verizon’s portfolio of wireless phones. The companies followed up on that deal by offering Microsoft’s Bing search engine on Verizon smartphones.

In another agreement that crosses company lines, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series are being prepared to carry Adobe’s Flash 10.1. Earlier, Google said its Android platform will support Flash 10.1. Apple has been resisting the use of the Adobe technology on its iPhone.

Google has opened the door to iPhone-like 3D games on certain Android handsets, offering support for the OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics standard with its latest Android Native Development Kit (NDK).

Mountain View announced the third release of its Android NDK  and the chief addition is Open GL for Embedded Systems 2.0 native libraries, thus bringing the platform inline with Apple’s iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre.

Android applications run inside Google’s very own Java virtual machine, known as Dalvik, but since June, the company has offered a kit that lets you embed components written in native code languages such as C and C++. The kit as a whole can be used to target devices running Android 1.5 or higher, but OpenGL ES 2.0 is only available for Android 2.0 or higher. The latest version of Google’s (partially)open source mobile stack is Android 2.1, which debuted with the company’s very own Nexus One Phone.

Mozilla is using the Android NDK to bring Firefox to Google’s platform, and the open sourcers plan on switching development to OpenGL.

The latest Android NDK for Windows, Mac, or Linux includes a sample application that uses OpenGL ES 2.0 vertex and fragment shaders. In doing so, Google makes it easier for developers to move their existing ES 2.0 games to the platform.

A recent announcement by Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it has tied up with Texas Instruments (TI) to offer services on the OMAP processors.

The main aim of the tie up has been to  help TI’s customers to deploy applications on their products faster.

The services include Linux baseport, Android operating system (OS) porting on hardware platforms, middleware, third-party component integration, application development, and operator customization. These services will address commercialization requirements for OEMs designing on Google’s Android platform.

Wipro has been a part of the OMAP ecosystem since 2002 and has worked with TI on various OMAP processor advancements. Last month, Wipro Tech entered into the Open Handset Alliance so as to turn around Android-based products and solutions faster with rich feature-sets.

This Monday might put one more contender on the “phone” front : Microsoft is going to launch its Windows Mobile “comeback”…a supposed direct challenge to Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone.

The company is planning to use the opening day of the GSM Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain to publicly show off what has, until now, been called Windows Mobile 7.

Microsoft’s phone-maker partners to show off devices running the successor to Windows Mobile 6.5, which was unveiled at a conference in 2009.

The only two questions are the name of the new operating system and whether it’ll contain the same code as versions that predate the release due next Monday.

The new term being used is “Windows Phone 7″.

It might also be due to the company’s new re-organised marketing sector. Under the change, Microsoft veteran and former general manager of Microsoft’s advertising and customer engagement Gayle Troberman has been named as chief creative officer.