Hasta La Gadget!

App stores and touchscreens are all well and good, but when it comes to cruising for the ladies, dogs are still man’s best friend. According to a new study from Retrevo.com, women find guys with dogs sexier than guys with smartphones. “Want to attract more women?” the site asked in a blog post. “Get a dog! More women under 35 say they are attracted to a dog walker than someone using a cool smartphone.”

Men apparently find the use of “cool phones” more attractive than do women. Fifty percent of the men surveyed said they find people with cool phones more attractive–36 percent of women answered the same. The male/female split breaks down to 46 and 38 percent for “cool laptops,” 42 and 30 percent for book reading, and 36 and 29 percent for iPad ownership.

Interestingly, women find wearing Bluetooth headsets slightly more attractive–at 33 to 31 percent. As for phone holsters, no one finds those attractive, so stop doing that, if you ever want to get some again.

Alltel has been dead for a while, ever since Verizon took over the company. However, in a few markets the carrier has hung around, and now it appears to be making a big come back with its latest handset. Alltel has released the Samsung Gem Android phone free with a two-year contract.

The Gem runs on Android 2.1, and features a Swype virtual keyboard, Bluetooth, full touchscreen, Wi-Fi, 3G, and 3.2 MP camera. The Gem supports the My Circle program that the Alltel brand kept, which seems to be rare for smartphone plans to include.

Via Hot Hardware

There’s been a lot gloom and doom surrounding Nokia and its OS lately. The company is largely considered to have fallen behind to the likes of Apple and Android. Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop, is apparently considering some drastic actions, having described the company’s current situation as a “burning platform” and suggesting a symbolic jump into the cold Atlantic ocean below.

There’s been talk of moving the company to the Silicon Valley in the U.S. and dumping its dependence on Symbian, in favor of Windows 7’s open arms.

With all of this talk, it’s important to put some things into perspective–namely, according to recently released numbers from research firm Gartner, Symbian is still the world’s most popular smartphone operating system. In 2010, Symbian appeared on 37.6 of smartphones shipped. Android and Apple took 22.7 and 15.7 percent, respectively, with RIM (BlackBerry), grabbing 16 percent.

Of course, the most telling part of these numbers are how they compare to last year’s. Symbian dropped from 46.9 percent to 37.6–Android, meanwhile, grew a staggering 888.8 percent over last year.

Also worth noting is the fact that Nokia isn’t the only company making Symbian-based handsets. Fujitsu, Sharp, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson also manufacture devices for the platform.