This is a Guest post by Annkur, if you want to write for us, check out Write for .Shoutmeloud

Today Smartphone are more than just a superior piece of hardware, the UI and applications make the biggest difference. And Apple’s has managed to change the way the industry and consumers perceive a smart phone with the iPhone alone. Right from the multi-touch UI to the App store which is a cut above the rest. A lot has been said and written about how the iTunes App Store leads the applications industry and how Nokia has failed to produce anything significant to compete with the same. And its certainly true that the iTunes app store leads with a billion app downloads, 65000+ apps live and 8500 apps coming in to Apple every week for review.

Image Credit

For Apple and its developers the task is fairly simple (not implying that its no hard work), as all their iTouch devices have the same screen size, structure and Operating System. Thus there is no great compatibility issues when developing apps for the iPhone or the iPod touch. On the other hand Nokia has 75 models for which it is trying to implement the Ovi Store. This is a challenging job as Nokia has different software profiles (Symbian 40, 60, 60 2nd edition etc) and different screen sizes, resolution, hardware layout etc. Thus getting an app live on the Ovi Store requires much more effort.

The different is in the vision. Nokia is developing mobile phones since over a decade, while Apple has just entered the marked along with the smart phone boom, their approach was better planned and revolutionizing. This makes the task of getting a app store competitor for Nokia a big uphill fight. While I would agree that the App Store leads and its certainly fabulous, I would give Nokia the benefit that they have a much wider audience to satisfy.

Hope they improve, innovate and bring us something good. At the end its the consumers (that’s you and me) who benefits from all this competition.

This is a guest post by Annkur Agarwal who writes at OnlyGizmos Network. If you like his article you can consider following him on Twitter @annkur

I have loved the iPhone, but now I am quitting the iPhone.

This is not an easy decision.

I was there in January 2007 when it was announced and I bought the first iPhone as soon as it was available. I happily bought the iPhone 3G a year later. I’ve proudly yelled “I Am A Member Of The Cult Of iPhone.” I’ve been an unabashed cheerleader for the device to all who’ll listen. And I’ve scoffed at developers who said they’d abandon the platform.

But I’m not going to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS. Instead, I’m abandoning the iPhone and AT&T. I will grudgingly pay the $175 AT&T termination fee and then I will move on to another device.

What finally put me over the edge? It wasn’t the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I’ve lived with that for two years. It’s not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I’ve lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn’t the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle.

Most of you won’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain.

Google Voice is a a call management service that lets you determine what calls get through to you based on who’s calling and what time of day it is, among other factors. It has amazing features, like automatically transcribing all your voicemails. And you can forward calls to any other phone easily and automatically. Here’s an overview of the service if you aren’t familiar with it.

I’ve always wanted to use Google Voice but there’s a big switching cost - changing your phone number. Too many people have that phone number and use it to call in great stories. There’s no way I’m giving that up. And there’s another problem with Google Voice. When you make outbound calls from a phone, it (obviously) doesn’t use your Google Voice phone number, so recipients don’t know it’s you calling. Those were two hurdles I wasn’t willing to jump over.

But now Google is planning on rolling out number portability, so I can move my mobile phone number to Google. None of my friends, family or contacts have to store a new number.

That still leaves the problem of outbound calls, though. I can move my mobile number to Google and then get a new iPhone account, but outbound calls won’t be identified because they are on the new number. Google has a solution for that too, though. They are releasing apps for a variety of handsets that effectively take over the native dialer, address book and call log. Problem solved. I can use any phone I like, or a bunch of phones, and just choose the one that makes sense at any time. I never have to be tied to a carrier and their restrictive contracts again.

Or so I thought. Apple and AT&T are now blocking the iPhone version of the Google Voice app. Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing - moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google.

So what phone will I use next? Well, that decision is easy, too. I’d move to the Palm Pre because I believe it is the best phone out there other than the iPhone 3GS. But Google hasn’t created an app for the Palm Pre yet, just Android and Blackberry phones. So for now I’m going to use the new Android myTouch 3G along with the Google Voice App. As soon as something better comes out, or Google makes an app for the Pre, I’ll switch. And keep the same phone number. No long term contracts for me.

And Apple, if you ever decide to put the hammer down on AT&T and do the right thing for your loyal users, I’ll consider switching back. In the meantime, I’ll just use one of many iPod Touches laying around our office to test out new apps.

Apple confirmed on Tuesday the death of a man who worked at an iPhone plant in China.

According to various Chinese media reports, the worker at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn committed suicide last week after a fourth-generation iPhone prototype for which he was responsible went missing.

"We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told CNET on Tuesday. "We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect."

Apple did not comment on the details of the worker's death, allegations regarding Foxconn's questioning of the worker, or the status of the allegedly missing phone prototype.

Various English-language sites have been repeating and translating Chinese media reports.

According to Chinese media, 25-year-old Sun Danyong was responsible for shipping iPhone prototypes to Apple. Danyong reported the missing device to Foxconn after noticing that one of the 16 iPhones he received was no longer in his possession.

Foxconn is Apple's longtime manufacturing partner in China. Apple has used the company to manufacture all of its iPods and, more recently, all of the iPhone models.

It’s been just under one year since social-gaming startup Playdom launched Mobsters, which has grown to become the #1 game on MySpace with 13.5 million total installs. Now, the company is taking the incredibly popular game mobile with its first iPhone App, dubbed Mobsters: Big Apple (iTunes Link). And while it may not be the first such mafia-related game on the iPhone, it still has a few tricks up its sleeve that could turn it into a major hit.

Now, Playdom isn’t close to being the first mover here — we covered iMob back in January, and we’ve seen competing social gaming companies like Zynga and SGN launch similar games based on the Mafias, Vampires, and a number of other themes. But Playdom has one advantage that the others don’t: it has directly hooked Mobsters Big Apple into its counterpart Mobsters game on MySpace, which means millions of players will be able to begin playing with the account that they’ve spent the last year building up on the social network. SGN and Zynga both offer Facebook and MySpace games with similar themes to their iPhone games, but for whatever reason they haven’t linked them together, which means gamers have to begin anew if they start playing on the iPhone.

Aside from a large existing user base, Playdom also has the benefit of being able to use much of the same content from its well-established MySpace game on the iPhone, which means the new mobile app has access to 65 missions and plenty of items. And because both games use the same backend, the company can continuously add new content to both games. The iPhone app can’t currently connect to Playdom’s Facebook game, but the company says support is coming.

As with other games in this genre, gameplay largely revolves around completing missions and becoming more powerful by acquiring better weapons (there’s also a time constraint that forces you to keep coming back for more). It may not sound particularly appealing until you’ve tried it out for yourself, but once you do it’s easy to quickly become totally addicted. Playdom has done a good job enhancing the experience with audio clips (you’ll hear things like “Magnifico..” when you complete a mission), and assorted art assets.

Now we’ll just have to wait and see if Zynga and SGN strike back with their own web-connected updates, or if there’s a reason why they made the decision to hold off on adding that functionality.

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/21/playdom-extends-1-myspace-game-mobsters-to-the-iphone/?awesm=tcrn.ch_8Yp&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=twitter-publisher-plugin&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch

The developers of Facebook for iPhone 3.0 have announced that it is about 98% complete and due for release to the App Store very soon. The developers say that this major update to their popular iPhone app includes: 1. A new News Feed 2. Ability to “Like” 3. Events with the capability to reply to the invite 4. Pages 5. Notes 6. Ability to create new photo albums 7. Upload photos to any album 8. Zoom into photos 9. Easier photo tagging 10. Profile Pictures albums 11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications 12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen 13. Better Notifications which link to the comments so that you can reply 14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page 15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call. The only disappointment for fans is their confirmation that Push Notifications will not make it to version 3.0. However, it will be in the 3.1 update which is also planned for this summer. The free download of the current version 2.5 of Facebook for iPhone is still available