Hasta La Gadget!

Something as simple as changing your Android phone’s wallpaper or downloading a ringtone could transmit personal data about you, including your location, without your knowledge.

Sound farfetched? It’s not: About 15 of 30 randomly selected, popular, free Android apps sent sent users’ private information to remote advertising servers and two-thirds of the apps handled data in ambiguous ways, say researchers.

The researchers at Duke, Intel Labs and Penn State University, created a tool called TaintDroid that identifies apps transmitting private data to distant locations. TaintDroid monitors how applications access and use your location, microphone, camera, phone numbers in your contact list. The tool also provides feedback once an app is newly installed, letting you know if the app is transmitting data.

“This automatic feedback gives users greater insight into what their mobile applications are doing and could help users decide whether they should consider uninstalling an app,” says Peter Gilbert, a graduate student in computer science at Duke University who’s working on the project. The TaintDroid program isn’t publicly available yet.

The latest data supports a study published in June by mobile security company SMobile Systems that found 20 percent of the then-available 48,000 third-party applications for the Android operating system provided sensitive or private information to outside sources.

Data collection practices in apps are increasingly becoming a major privacy issue for consumers. In July, a mobile security firm called Lookout identified a free wallpaper Android app, Jackeey, that allegedly gathered data about its users, including their phone numbers, carrier subscriber identifiers and phone number of their voicemail accounts. The app then sent the information to a website based in China. The Jackeey app is estimated to have anywhere from 1 to 4 million downloads.

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Well, well, well… would you look at what we found lounging around Best Buy’s NYC holiday event! Yes, indeed, it’s the T-Mobile G2 (the US version of the HTC Desire Z if you happen to think it looks familiar). After months of leaks and blurry shots we finally got to check out T-Mobile and HTC’s G1 replacement, and it’s got everything we’ve been waiting for — a 3.7-inch display, Android 2.2, 4GB of internal memory, an 800MHz Snapdragon processor and a 5 megapixel cam with a flash. Oh, what’s it like to use? That answer, dear friends, is after the break along with a hands-on video.

Continue reading T-Mobile G2 preview

T-Mobile G2 preview originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon is set to open the doors on an Android App Store, adding to the list of places where you may or may not be able to buy software for your device. According to Tech Crunch’s excellent MG Siegler, the store’s structure will be very similar to that of Apple’s App Store.

Developers will have to pay $99 to sign up, just like with Apple, and will get the same 70:30 revenue split. Amazon will decide what gets into the store, pull any apps it doesn’t like, and wrap everything up in its DRM. Further, you can’t sell your apps cheaper elsewhere. If it costs a dollar in the Android Market, it has to cost a dollar over at Amazon.

And it will be dollars. The Amazon app store will be U.S-only at launch, although as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out, “Amazon takes payments in more countries than Google Checkout does.” Apps can also be free.

One problem that won’t be solved is customer confusion. Unless Amazon makes its own tablet which has exclusive use of the store, then it will have to pick a range of Android devices to support. Unlike its music store, whose goods (MP3 files) can be played anywhere, an app store could only support a subset of devices.

Amazon will join Verizon and Google as outlets for Android apps, adding to the confusion. Remember the arguments about Android being “open” and iOS being “closed”? They’re starting to look a little silly now.

Yep, Amazon Launching Their Own App Store For Android Too [MG Siegler via ★]

Illustration: Charlie Sorrel

See Also:

• A Call for Transparency in Apple's App Store
• Verizon Promises Simpler, More Lucrative App Store for Developers …
• Independent App Stores Take On Google's Android Market

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

San Francisco bar owner Jay Siegan decided to express his hatred for AT&T with the marquee outside his night club, shown in the photo above. This is visual proof that actions speak louder than words (especially when your iPhone’s reception is so bad), but those are some clever words, too.

Big thanks to San Francisco culture blog SFist.com for letting us repost this photo.

See Also:

• With iPad, Apple Still Has a Fatal Attraction for AT&T
• AT&T: The Communications Company That Failed to Communicate in …

Photo courtesy of Jay Siegan

I really want to like Billy May’s ambitious concept for a browser-centric, open-web-standards-based phone

But it’s hopelessly unfettered from what’s actually buildable, usable or marketable.

Mozilla Labs has highlighted the phone, which May called Project Seabird, in its “Concept Series,” a showcase for community-created visions of the web’s future.

May, who is a talented industrial designer, has crammed a lot of interesting ideas into his two-and-a-half-minute video:

• a pop-out Bluetooth headset that doubles as an infrared pointer
• dual pico projectors that can project both a full-size display as well as a virtual keyboard
• wireless charging
• a standard mini USB connector
• a 3.5mm audio jack
• enough processing power to render 3-D spacescapes in real time or display YouTube videos at full resolution.

Because there are two pico projectors, May imagines that one could be used to display a keyboard while the other displays a larger screen. Or, you could place the phone on your desk and have one projector display the left half of an ergonomic split keyboard, while the other projector displays the right half.

Based on the icons May’s painted into his impressive video, it’s running some version of Windows and the browser is Firefox, of course.

The trouble is that current pico projectors fall short in both brightness and clarity: You need to use them in a darkened room, like the one May’s rendering takes place in. Virtual keyboards of the type shown in the video are difficult if not impossible to use. And if netbook processors like the Intel Atom series can barely handle Windows, just imagine how sluggish it will be running on an ARM-based cellphone CPU.

One thing’s for sure: The open-source browser community is going to love this phone.

Those of us in the reality-based community, however, are shaking our heads in disbelief.

Image credit: Billy May

See Also:

• Beautiful Concept Phone for HTC Should Be Built
• Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet Concept
• Concept Phone Mashup: Blackberry vs Optimus Maximus
• Squeeze, Grip and Tilt to Control Synaptics’ Concept Phone …
• Concept Specs Add 50º to Your Angle of View

Hat tip: Webmonkey