Norton Mobile Utilities Beta

Norton Mobile Utilities Beta (for Android)Since its introduction for DOS nearly thirty years ago, Norton Utilities has carved out a space for itself as definitive utility software for the PC. With Norton Mobile Utilities Beta (Free), Android device owners now have the power to analyze, organize, and optimize the software on their smartphones. Whether you're uninstalling apps, stopping them in their tracks, tracking mobile data usage, or unpacking detailed information about your mobile phone and OS, Mobile Utilities is your Swiss Army Knife.

Granted, it is an economy model. Its four applications—Device, Usage, Installer, and Apps—are a far cry from the 14 featured in the original Utilities Suite written for DOS and Windows 3.1, and its capabilities are largely available already. However, Norton Mobile Utilities is a free app (the software for DOS cost $80). Unifying a host of otherwise disparate tools in one app backed by the Norton name, Mobile Utilities deserves a spot on your smartphone.

Device
For Android propeller heads, the Device module is your toolbox. Want to know about your phone's CPU? (My Galaxy S has an "ARMv7 Processor rev 2 v71"). Or perhaps the temperature at which it runs? (80.6 degrees Fahrenheit for me). How about the signal strength of your service provider? (My T-Mobile service: "-73 dbm 20 asu," for what it's worth). And that's just the System Information screen.

Norton also includes some terrific real-time charts that'll help you visualize your battery and CPU usage, memory, network up and down speeds, and internal storage capacity. Most of it's overkill, but for the technically-inclined, Norton serves up more detailed information than you'll find in your Android Settings, though it still cannot rival the specificity of SeePU.

Usage
If Norton Mobile Utilities Beta's Device module is for the geeks, Usage is for everyone else. Mobile data plans aren't cheap, so any tool that lets you track your talk, SMS, and data usage deserves a mental bookmark. Norton lets you specify a plan, add a billing start date, and enter voice and data caps. Because you can browse previous usage (I went back to the start of May), Usage makes for a penny-wise roamer. There's also automation in Usage that Norton doesn't deliver elsewhere. For example, under Settings I set up a Usage Alert that would automatically notify me if I exceeded three-quarters of my usage (as defined by my plan).

Installer
Installer will be incredibly useful for 10 percent of Android device users and incredibly confusing for the other 90 percent. The reason is, you don't need it if you get apps from the Android Market. However, for those who dare to dip outside the Market and either transfer rogue apps from their desktop or download them directly to their phone as .APK files, Norton Mobile Utilities' Installer will spare you headaches. If you have a .APK file on your SD card, Installer finds it and lets you install it by tapping the name (it will even delete the .APK if you ask it to). I tested it using the PCMag 2011 Fastest Mobile Networks field test software, the Sensorly's Field Test. It made the process easy, though most Android users will probably never know or care.

Apps
Of Norton Mobile Utilities Beta's four modules, the Apps component has the broadest appeal. It's not that Norton Mobile Utilities does that much more than is already included with "Manage applications" (Settings/Applications/Manage Applications), but rather that it makes that functionality deeper and easier to find.

When I opened the Apps module on my Galaxy S Android phone, I could easily see that four of my eight applications that were running. Clicking "Show System" adds system processes (34 for me) to the mix. Norton lets you quit apps individually by clicking an "X," or end them all by tapping "Stop Running Apps." I can see how the ability to batch-quit could be useful if you're a bit of an app hoarder and all those Angry Birds are egging your phone's performance. Also useful is the ability to open, uninstall, or reveal detailed information (including the version number, location, permissions, memory usage, and even battery usage) about an app simply by clicking it.

While I think the batch-quit functionality deserves praise, I would have loved to see the Apps module do more. As it stands, there isn't a distinction between apps or services, so I'd warn against tampering with system "apps." Along the same lines, I would have loved to see Norton bring un-delete to Android (remember the original version of Norton Utilities for DOS had UnErase). As it stands, the Apps module feels more like Norton's take on Advanced Task Killer—useful if unremarkable.

Utilities Made Easy
Don't think of Norton Mobile Utilities Beta (for Android) as heir to the company's comprehensive desktop utility software. It doesn't need to be. Despite the capability of today's smartphones, thankfully there isn't the need for such maintenance. Instead Mobile Utilities makes sense as an "app." It's free, simple, and gathers tools otherwise scattered across system settings and third-party apps. Already a solid beta, Norton Mobile Utilities should also get even better: The company intends to add storage optimization, greater widget customization, and monthly Wi-Fi usage monitoring in the coming weeks. However, if you want a useful maintenance tool for your Android device, don't bother waiting—download Norton Mobile Utilities Beta (for Android) today.

More Mobile Utilities:
• Norton Mobile Utilities Beta (for Android)
• The Missing Sync for Android 1.4
• doubleTwist 2.6
• Google Android 1.5
• Apple iPhone OS 3.0

GateGuru for Android

GateGuru (for Android)
Pros
Clean UI. Integrates with Tripit and Kayak for flight details, Gowalla, Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook for sharing. Checkpoint wait time estimates. Tips, reviews, and deals. Airport maps.
Cons
Tips would be more useful if GateGuru added recommendations from established location-based social networking sites such as Foursquare. Airport maps deserve a shortcut on the home screen.
Bottom Line
GateGuru (for Android) is an app to pack: It will help you navigate airports, anticipate wait times, find the freshest food, and travel with greater confidence.

Imagine this grim scene: You have a three-hour layover at LaGuardia and the unenviable choice between the Auntie Anne's or the sports bar—which option is least apt to inflict irreversible damage on your stomach lining? With GateGuru (for Android) you can use your smartphone to save yourself the plight of past LaGuardia travelers. User-submitted reviews help you ferret out the best grub, tips enable you to spot a deal on that day-old pretzel, and airport maps and checkpoint wait times will spare you from extending your tenure. Add integration with social networking sites for real-time status updates (to satiate your friends' schadenfreude) and tie-ins to KAYAK and Tripit for flight details, and GateGuru proves a gracious travel companion in the least hospitable airport.

Credentials, Connections, and High Flyers
Of the app's four main modules—Trips, Account, High Flyers, and Airports—you'll probably spend most of your time taxying the Airports section, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go exploring. While GateGuru doesn't require users set up an account to use the app, if you're interested in managing travel and social networking tie-ins, you can sign up through the Account section ("User") of the app. From here you can also connect with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Gowalla to share updates on the social networks or sign into Tripit or KAYAK to see your flight information from GateGuru ("Connect"). You can even post your own suggestions ("Reviews & Tips") or tabulate the points you've earned through activity ("Scores").

The Trips and High Flyers sections build on those features. In High Flyers, you can access the leaderboard and view Global champs (forget Mayors, "60MinuteMan" is "Captain" of GateGuru) or filter to your Facebook friends. Meanwhile, Trips automatically retrieves itineraries from KAYAK or Tripit (registered through Accounts).

Plenty of Coverage
As useful as the previous modules may be, Airports is the hub of the app, and indispensible to your LaGuardia layover. GateGuru includes impressive airport coverage, especially for the domestic traveler: Despite cautious international support (just 6 in Asia and 7 in Europe), GateGuru has entries for 94 airports in the United States. You can either browse the entire list ("All"), filter by your location ("Nearby"), or search by an airport code or city name ("Search"). Clicking on an airport—I used New York LaGuardia Airport for my testing—opened a fresh screen with tabs for Terminals, Checkpoints, Reviews, and Tips.

Motorola Atrix 4G

The Motorola Atrix 4G Smartphone

Atrix 4G is a smart phone from Motorola that looks very cool. Motorola Atrix 4G is powered with NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor. And soon 4G Atrix will operate in AT & T 4G networks. Motorola Atrix 4G provides 4 inch capacitive touch screen TFT 16 million colors with 540 x 960 resolution, more sharply than iPhone 4 or BlackBerry Storm 3. And this android smartphone (froyo) has supported HD (high definition).

In addition, Motorola Atrix 4G is also equipped with 5MP hi-res camera with aufotocus and LED flash. And the most interesting thing is the dock as a backrest that will appear along with this cell phone.

If attached to the dock, Motorola Atrix 4G will look like a laptop. When installed, Atrix 4G will be changed to "computer mode" and run the PC operating system interface, complete with Firefox, Adobe Flash, and so forth. In fact, users can also download PC applications such as in the real PC desktop.

If you need a wider screen, you can even connect the Motorola Atrix 4G with TV or other large screen media to run a computer process.

Motorola Atrix 4G network will be launched via AT & T in this first quarter of 2011.

Android Smartphones

It’s time for an update on updates, yet again. And yet again this is about Android smartphones, two to be precise, both made by Motorola: the Charm and the Flipout. Both of these phones were launched running Android 2.1 with Motoblur. And they were both announced after Google had already introduced Android 2.2 Froyo (and shipped even more time after that, of course). Now if this somehow made you expect of Motorola to issue updates to Froyo for these phones, well, you were wrong.

Motorola has just updated its Android Software Upgrade News page, where it lists the planned updates (or lack thereof) for its smartphones, and it’s not good for the Charm and the Flipout. It turns out that they will both be stuck on Android 2.1 for the remainder of their lives. There will be no update to Froyo, or any other future Android version.

Why Motorola has decided to give up on the owners of these phones is unclear. Perhaps they have successors ready to be announced soon, or perhaps sales weren’t great. In any case, this is one more reminder that in the Android world, unless you buy one of the Nexus phones, this can happen to you at any time.

HTC Pyramid

Even before the Incredible S was announced as the company’s new top-of-the-line set back in February, the rumored Pyramid was the upcoming. Here are renders of HTC’s three upcoming smartphone devices, Pyramid, Prime and Ignite, posted on Chinese site xda.cn. The Pyramid is an Android phone powered by dual-core processor. It has a 4.3-inch large 960×540 touchscreen, a 8 Megapixel main camera, a 1.3 Megapixel front camera. The Prime and Ignite, on the other hand, will be mid-range Windows Phone 7 devices. The former comes with a side-slide QWERTY keyboard, like the 7 Pro. Both phones will be equipped with 800Mhz processor and come with a 3.7-inch touchscreen and a 5 Megapixel camera.

The HTC Pyramid is a 4.3-inch device with a 1.2GHz processor and 540 x 960 qHD display, according to a report in XDA.cn, which is accompanied by the images located above and below. However, the blurb also states that this is an Android 3.0 Honeycomb device, which seems unlikely given that Honeycomb is supposedly reserved for tablets. The report goes on to allege 768MB of RAM and dual cameras: eight-megapixel rear and 1.3-megapixel front-facing. It's not entirely clear from the machine translation how many cores are supposedly present in the CPU.

We've heard of the Pyramid several times before, most concretely in an Expansys listing for the "Desire HD2" as well as earlier this morning in a screenshot from Telstra's internal systems. We expect HTC to reveal more on this handset, along with the newly-revealed HTC Ignite and HTC Prime, next week at the CTIA trade show in Orlando.