First Look

Last Tuesday at CTIA, Skype and Verizon  jointly announced the Skype Mobile application is coming to select BlackBerry and Android phones on Verizon's network.

While only nine phones can currently run the app, Verizon and Skype are sure to add more phones to the mix. So if you don't have a BlackBerry Storm I or II, BlackBerry Curve or Tour, Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Eris, or Motorola Devour, keep your peepers trained on this First Look video. We'll show you what you're missing out on--or what you should expect when and if Verizon pushes … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Opera Software submitted its mobile proxy-based browser, Opera Mini 5, to the iPhone App Store this week, but whether Apple accepts Opera's proposed alternative to Safari is still up in the air.

Either verdict could benefit Opera's hand. If Apple accepts the browser, Opera wins and can begin making a name for itself on yet another mobile platform. If Apple rejects Opera Mini, Opera gets a chance to play the victim, perhaps setting the stage to mount a similar European antitrust claim against Apple as Opera did against Microsoft for its Internet Explorer browser several years back.… Read more

Earlier this week, Opera Software released Opera Mini 5 beta for Android, a vast improvement to the version 4.2 browser that had previously been available for Android. Opera Mini 5 beta isn't new to the scene--it's been out for some months on Java phones, BlackBerry, and interestingly, it just hopped on board Windows phones.

In this First Look video, we take you on a hands-on tour of Opera's slick-looking browser alternative for Android smartphones, which is available for free in the Android Market or by downloading it from www.opera.com/mini/next/.

We've taken a first look at Google Buzz (video) from many angles--as a Gmail feature, as a privacy nightmare, and as a pain to disable. Now it's time to fire up the mobile phone to see how Google's new social networking service works on the go.

We give you a taste of Google Buzz for mobile in our First Look video, as tested (fittingly) on Google's Nexus One phone. But heed our warning--what you can access using Buzz from various outlets is a brain-bender, and depends on your smartphone.… Read more

In week since Mozilla released the first Firefox browser for mobile phones, we've had a better chance to explore the Web on the Nokia N900. Firefox for Maemo, as it's called, is also available for the N810 Internet Tablet.

We go over some of our observations in the First Look video here, pointing out that extensions, in particular, are the browser's most notable innovation for Firefox mobile.

There are some limitations to the way Firefox handles the add-ons screens. For a start, the search engine icons you see when you begin a search (for Google, Wikipedia, or so on) count as pre-installed add-ons. That makes removing them easy, but it also takes up space in the add-ons manager, which is knock against Firefox for Maemo since maximizing screen real estate is the gold standard of the mobile experience. In this case, that precious space should be devoted exclusively to showing off add-ons.

So far, new add-ons are hard to find. Firefox mobile surfaces five recommended extensions at a time; expect the YouTube Enabler and Weave Sync to be at the top of a newcomer's list. Although there is a search bar, there's no way to browse the add-on catalog from the device. Your best bet is to discover what you want from the online catalog, which is clearly less than ideal for mobile users. Mozilla's Firefox developers might consider creating one screen for managing add-ons you already have, and another for discovering new ones, just like with NoScript, Adblock Plus, and TwitterBar.… Read more

The second permutation of Sharetones for Android 2.0 is here.

But what is it? If you're unfamiliar, Sharetones is an app that helps you coax ringtones out of songs you already own. At first blush, that sounds identical to Ringdroid, a free ringtone editor.

What's different here is that Sharetones caters to the lazy. Not everyone has the talent or time to make killer ringtones worth listening to time and again. Sharetones skirts the annoyance by comparing the songs you have on your phone with the songs it has in its user-generated online database. The Sharetones server … Read more

Augmented reality is fast becoming a reality for mobile search apps of all stripes. Layars, which calls itself a "reality browser," was one of the first of interest to pop up on our iPhone radar. Not long ago, Yelp oh-so-quietly added its own way to slap its content over the world you see through your camera lens. The "monocle" feature originally surfaced as a hidden gem within Yelp 3.0. Now, in Yelp 4.0, Monocle has earned its place as a permanent feature on video-enabled 3GS iPhones.

Expect to see many more augmented reality apps … Read more

We've always liked Google's Mobile App for BlackBerry.

A recent update this week to version 3.5 adds an unexpected and interesting new feature--searching through your phone's e-mail and address book as well as the Web--when you type or speak a name into the search bar.

Although the BlackBerry does have separate search functionality for the address book and in-box, Google's search app rolls them into one, and then tucks local phone search neatly into its free Web search app.

Learn more about contact and e-mail search in our First Look video (above) or in our review.… Read more

CLARIFICATION: 1/15/10 at 2:50 pm PT. The video notes that Firefox mobile appears to only work in landscape mode. This is because the Nokia N900 doesn't support portrait mode.

The way development is going at Mozilla, it won't be long before we see the first full release of Firefox for a mobile device. Actually, two releases. Mozilla is making its browser's first mobile entrant Nokia's N900 and N810 Internet Tablet, both running on the Linux-based Maemo operating system.

This First Look video shows off the point Mozilla has reached so far in Firefox … Read more