HTC Bliss Rumored Specs Moderate, New HTC Sense 3.5 Mentioned

Rumor had it back in May that HTC was preparing a phone exclusively for women and, after seeing what its camera is capable of, we saw the first image of the phone to be called HTC Bliss, coming to Verizon.

According to recent rumors, the HTC Bliss will sport a Qualcomm MSM7x30 processor, probably the MSM7630, clocking at 800MHz. Aside from the Adreno 205 GPU aiding the processor there will also be Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread on-board to make it even more fluid. As with any HTC-made Android phone, there will be HTC's own Sense userinterface on top of the platform, but the Bliss will allegedly get a new version of Sense. 

Rumors indicate that it will be HTC Sense version 3.5. The latest (actual) version of HTC Sense is 3.0 which is shipping on the flagship Sensation and EVO 3D. Whether it will add some more to the Sense experience or on the contrary, it will take away all the 3D animations because of the slower processor is yet unknown as there is no more information. 

Windows Phone 7 App Roundup 8 Aug 2011

In this episode of the Windows Phone 7 App Roundup we demonstrate five applications in 30 seconds each. These apps will keep you entertained, allow you to listen to music others are playing in your vicinity, and search through Wikipedia with ease. To download these apps directly to your WP7 device, just click on the title of the application and the Zune software will automatically launch to the app in Marketplace. If you have the free Microsoft Tag app installed on your WP7 smartphone just snap a picture of the Tag image and the mobile Marketplace will navigate to that app. 

Perfect Scan – Trial and $2.99 full version



With Perfect Scan you can take an image of any document and have it saved on your Windows Phone 7smartphone. Convert the images into a multipage PDF file which can be sent through email. Search through your document library to quickly find what you are looking for.



Soundtracker – A free application



Soundtracker is a fun app that lets you listen to what your friends and neighbors are listening. Just create a free Soundtracker account and begin created your own radio stations. Share the stations and songs with friends through Facebook, Twitter, or email.



WikiRama – Lite and $o.99 full version



WikiRama delivers a full panorama experience that Windows Phone 7 users have become accustomed to. Search through any article on Wikipedia to have a full version rendered on your Windows Phone 7 smartphone. Save a page as a favorite to have it located on your WikiRama startup page.



GeoDefense – Trial and $2.99 full version



In my opinion tower defense style games are the most addictive games you can play, and the Xbox Livegame GeoDefense is no exception. While this game has interesting electronica style graphics, the gameplay is easy to execute. Build your towers and defend the goal to prevent the enemies from defeating you.



Wordament – A free application



In Wordament you play against other Windows Phone 7 users from around the world. The game is similar to Boggle in which you have letters arranged in 4x4 square and you need to come up with the most number of words in two minutes. See how well you rank against the other players.

Google Search Android App Update Teased By Google

The last time Google updated its Android searchapp, it was ten months ago, and was a relatively minor collection of mostly bugfixes. Well, there's still no new Google Search app out just yet, but it looks like one is set to arrive any day now. Google itself seems to have inadvertently leaked this news, posting this morning about the update on its mobile blog, only to subsequently take the post down.

From the time that the post did remain on the site, we can see that this new version was supposed to add a few features, like location-based results taking into account what country you're in, and new groupings for the suggestions that pop up as you enter your search terms. Changes to the the app's UI promise to make it easier to use, and newly-optimized code should leave you with a Google Search experience that is both faster and more consistent. 

We've got no idea just when Google will actually release this update, but from the sound of things, it was all ready to go. It's possible some bug was spotted at the last moment, and if that's the case, we could expect to see the corrected update hit the Android Market within the next day or so. 

Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro Now Available In UK

Sony Ericsson's Xperia Mini Pro, along with its brother-in-arms the Xperia Mini, were tapped for a Q3 release when SE announced the pair back in May. More recently, the smartphone has been marked as "coming soon" with a couple UK-based carriers. If this model was one you've been waiting for, we've got some good news, since the Xperia Mini Pro is now available at retail sales.

Both Carphone Warehouse and Mobiles.co.uk have the Xperia Mini Pro for sale currently. We haven't seen any offers so far for the smartphone off-contract, but at least you'll have a choice of providers (Orange, Vodafone, and T-Mobile)if you do decide to pick the XMP up, and you can walk away with it for free with a plan as low as 20GBP/month. 

The Xperia Mini Pro adds a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and front-facing camera to the Xperia Mini, making it quite a bit heavier, but leaving the rest of the hardware relatively unchanged. We haven't heard about any interest in the phone from US carriers, but you can always import if you're dead-set on acquiring an XMP (once we see it for sale off-contract, anyway). The smartphone has a 1GHz processor, and like the other recent Xperia models, includes Sony Ericsson's custom Facebook Android integration. 

HTC Inspire 4G Goes Gingerbread With Android 2.3.3 Update

Last month, AT&T promised that all of the Androids that it had started selling so far this year (as well as some from 2010) that didn't come withGingerbread already installed would be receiving updates to Android 2.3 at some point. Now the software update is ready for one of the models on that list, the HTC Inspire 4G.

The Inspire 4G received an update to enable HSUPA mode back in April, giving users a well-appreciated boost to their data speeds. Now with Gingerbread here, the Inspire 4G is shaping up to be a nicely-supported Android, update-wise.

AT&T users with Inspire 4Gs should be getting update notifications soon, if they haven't already. Thought HTC just announced the news today, in doing so it says that the update roll-out began last Thursday. If you haven't seen any sign of it yet, you can always try manually checking for an update, or downloading the 269MB RUU directly from HTC. 

The update will bring your phone up to Android 2.3.3, install a newer version of Sense, and of course include a smattering of unspecified bugfixes and improvements – look for smarter power management, among others.