Manufacturers brought the industry radical new ways to build PCs in 2008. Here are some of the coolest components we came across in 2008.
From gaming to business, retail to commercial, Wi-Fi to WiMAX, 2008 was the most cutting-edge year ever in the history of mobile computing.
From iPhones to BlackBerrys, 2008 saw the emergence of touch-screen titans, the first LG smartphone to hit the U.S. and the first device based on Google Android. Here are the 10 coolest smartphones that hit the market in 2008.
This week, the G1, the first smartphone based on the open-source Google Android operating system, received two key updates to make it even more of a rival against the other touch-screen titans: a new browser and visual voice-mail.
The new applications are now available for free in Google's Android Market, the operating system's application repository, similar to the Apple iPhone App Store.
First up is the inclusion of the Opera Mini 4.2 Web browser, which marks the first alternative browser to hit the G1. The browser features zooming, bookmarking, searching for text and saving. It also offers themes and skins and supports video playback, something the G1's native browser did not do without a plug-in.
Opera Mini 4.2 claims it can boost Web surfing speeds up to 30 percent and offer greater multilingual support.
For visual voice-mail, PhoneFusion has delivered its Fusion Voicemail Plus, an application that can centralize several voice-mail boxes and display them in a visual list, enabling users to prioritize e-mails and listen to them in the order they choose. Fusion Voicemail Plus also offers caller ID without requiring a caller's contact information to be stored in a user's contact list.
"After previewing Fusion Voicemail Plus for Android smartphones, we received an overwhelming amount of interest from the Android community," said Louis Libin, PhoneFusion CEO. "Our PhoneFusion development team has worked around-the-clock to get a beta version of the application ready for use. Stay tuned as we will continue roll out additional functionality in the next few weeks, showing PhoneFusion's commitment to enhancing the user experience beyond a mobile device's limits."
While neither application is exclusive only to Android and the G1—Opera Mini is available on most Java supported phones and BlackBerry handsets, and Windows Mobile 5 and 6 smartphones run visual voice-mail—they are the first true high-profile applications to be included on the device and could help the G1 better battle the Apple iPhone 3G, the just-released BlackBerry Storm, the HTC Fuze and the LG Incite.
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