Hasta La Gadget!

A Norwegian Android Web site got a hold of a video that appears to be the first of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Commercials. Better known as the PlayStation phone, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play has been one of the wost kept tech secrets with constant leaked photos and info, even by Sony execs. So, it shouldn’t be too big of a surprise that the commercial was leaked, as well.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the commercial is sort of creep and gross. Most of the ad features a shady, paranoid man running through back alleys and buildings with a pair of old crappy scissors. When he reaches his destination, a man cuts bandages off the Android robot to reveal that he underwent a back alley surgery to get human thumbs sewn onto his err.. hands (more like stubs). 

“Android is ready to play.”

Check out the video after the jump

When Motorola announced its dedication to Android relatively early on, people called the company crazy. Why would the handset manufacturer devote its line to that go nowhere mobile OS? The gamble paid off, of course, snatching Motorola from what looked like inevitable collapse.

Nokia’s position in 2011 is, of course, a bit than Motorola’s in, say, late 2009. Nokia, after all, is still the world’s leading phone manufacturer. When people speak about the company’s failures, it’s all relative–Nokia is failure, perhaps, but it’s the number one failure. The company has surrendered much of its market share to the likes of the iPhone and Android in all its various incarnations.

Nokia’s continued support of Symbian has largely been regarded as a sign that the company just can’t adapt to the new smartphone world. Ovi was, perhaps, a nice shot, but has paled in comparison to what the iPhone App Store has delivered.

Now the mobile world is all atwitter with buzz that the company might dump Symbian for Windows Phone 7. The company’s stock got a bit of a bump after an analyst suggested that an alliance between the two corporations would be mutual beneficial.

Certainly such a move would be a kick in the pants for Nokia, but while Windows Phone 7 has definitely resuscitated Microsoft’s sickly mobile team, the operating system is hardly a runaway success. The software giant, after all, is talking customer satisfaction instead of sales figure for a reason–WP7 isn’t really selling all that great.

The future of propaganda is in your pocket. The Egyptian government has utilized emergency services to get its pro-regime messages onto the phones of protesters, a fact confirmed by Vodaphone.

The carrier issued a statement stating that Hosni Mubarak’s regime was sending “messages to people” that weren’t “scripted by any of the mobile network operators and we do not have the ability to respond to the authorities on their content.”

Wired managed to get a hold of two of the texts. The first, sent on Monday, reads, “Egypt’s youth. Beware rumors and listen to the voice of reason. Egypt is above all so preserve it.” The government sent another yesterday reading, “To each mother-father-sister-brother, to every honest citizen. Preserve this country because the homeland stays forever.”

Isn’t that Murbarak has a Twitter account?

The company has approached the government to complain. “Vodafone Group has protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable. We have made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator.”

Google is taking a hard line on the latest version of Android. Honeycomb, it turns out, is not for phones. Asked when a version of Android 3.0 would launch for smartphones after the event, a Google spokesman told the crowd that the last version of the operating system is intended to be tablet-only. “Features will arrive on phones over time,” he told the press.

The answer isn’t entirely surprising. After all, Google insisted that Android 2.2 wasn’t optimized for tablets–not that everyone listened, of course. We saw a number of Android tablets flood the market prior to the soon-to-be unreleased Honeycomb.

Now, such a proclamation raises questions–for starters, what does that mean for the numbering system? Before Honeycomb, every Android upgrade was tailored for smartphones–now that 3.0 is tablet-only?

Google’s in a bit of a precarious position at the moment. The company is still preaching the openness of the software, but it’s beginning to insist on more concrete rules, to help avoid risking further potential fragmentation for the OS.

The big news out of today’s Google Honeycomb event? The Android Market is going browser-based. Of course, the app-based version of the store will stick around, but the company is adding a Web-based version, no doubt in anticipation of the upcoming Android tablet boom.

The store is live now and offers access to the 100,000 plus apps currently available for the mobile operating system. Users can rate apps, share them on Twitter, and keep track of them using the site’s My Market Account feature.

Google also used the occasion to show off Honeycomb a bit more, including the operating system’s new interface, and improved widgets and multi-tasking. Honeycomb-optimized apps debuted from 17 publishers, including Google, CNN, Weatherbug, Intuit, and Disney.