Virgin Mobile Not Feeling The Android UI-Enhancement Love

Android UI enhancements are a two-way street; as we discussed when reporting the coming demise of MotoBlur, they let manufacturers make their smartphones stand out from the crowd, and give the user some more value from his or her smartphone purchase, beyond that in just the phone's hardware. On the other hand, if you like Android just fine the way Google made it, you may see these UIs as wastes of battery life that slow down your phone. If that's your camp, you should be paying attention to what phones make it to Virgin Mobile, since the carrier recent talked about its commitment to plain vanilla Android. 

A spokesperson for the company wrote, "Virgin Mobile USA aims to make available devices that allow the end user to have the freedom to customize the device to their liking. We like to take a consistent approach with our Android portfolio and so we prefer to have the true Android experience loaded on all ourAndroid phones." 

You can see what the carrier is talking about with yesterday's announcement of the Motorola Triumph. In contrast to the simultaneously-announced Photon 4G on Sprint, the Triumph was debuted without much in the way of bells and whistles, running a mostly stock Froyo. Sure, there's a bit in the way of Virgin Mobile pre-loaded apps, but so long as the carrier keeps those consistent between its Androids, it should still be able to achieve its stated goal. 

Virgin Mobile may not have the latest and greatest Android models, but do you think it has the right idea when it comes to phone software? 

Verizon Distributing Samsung Fascinate ED04 Update

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Droid Charge update, Samsung and Verizon continue to push new firmware out to their customers, releasing system software i500.ED04 for the Samsung Fascinate. 

The Charge's update was pretty decent, fixing one big annoying, function-robbing bug, in addition to several smaller ones and providing some performance boosts. We wish the Fascinate was getting something nearly as interesting, but this ED04 release seems more meta than anything: one of the main purposes for this release is to patch the phone so that future update installation is improved. An update that prepares the smartphone for updating? Sounds very similar to February's pre-NoDo update for Windows Phone devices. 

To be fair, ED04 isn't solely an update-updating update; Verizon says it will also improve the connectivity of incoming calls. While that's great if you've been having an issue receiving voice calls, we haven't heard widespread reports of any such problem. Better safe than sorry, we suppose, so go ahead and snag this update as your Fascinate lets you know it's ready. 

Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro Slides Back to Late July

Pre-orders for Sony Ericsson's Xperia Pro in the UK went live at the beginning of the month. Initially, it looked like the smartphone might actually show up this month, but estimations were quickly revised for July, instead. Now there's news of additional delays, with the Xperia Pro not expected to arrive until the very end of July. 

Sony Ericsson has updated its UK-based web store, which now shows the Xperia Pro as "Available late JULY". Hopefully that will be the last of the revisions to the phone's launch date, but with the way it's been steadily creeping back, we wouldn't be surprised to see it slide a little further before Sony Ericsson locks-in a date. 

Pre-orders remain open for the Xperia Pro, which is selling for the equivalent of about $575. The QWERTY slider runs a 1GHz Snapdragon, has a 3.7-inch Bravia-powered 854 x 480 display, and sports both eight-megapixel rear and two-megapixel front cameras. The Android will ship running Gingerbread. 

Bing Search Now Helping With iPhone App Discovery

Microsoft's been making some changes lately to make Bing more smartphone-friendly. It just added new social networking functions to the mobile version of its site, and added some features related to search histories and Bing maps. Another new feature is specifically geared towards iPhone users, offering relevant apps mixed-in with your search results. 

The idea behind this "serendipitous discovery", as Microsoft calls it, is that there may be an app that could really help you out, one related to your search terms, but you might have never even considered looking in the App Store to find something like it. Maybe you're searching for information on when it's best to plant certain vegetables - in addition to the web results for your query, Bing will now look through the App Store, where it might find an app that helps you plan a garden. 

In addition to these apps returned amid search results, you can also explicitly look for some by searching for "top free apps" or the like. Finally, if you end up installing one of the suggested apps, future search results will let you jump right into that app with the appropriate query. The first time you look up "when to plant carrots" you might stumble across or example gardening app, but later the same search would let you pull up that app and go straight to looking for information on carrots. 

Bing's iPhone app discovery tools are up-and-running as of now. 

Windows Phone 7 Mango Will Support IPv6

Yesterday there was some news about Windows Phone 7 not supporting the new networking protocol called IPv6. IPv6 is the next version of the Internet Protocol to come after Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) has ran out of addresses. A global test flight of IPv6 sponsored by the Internet Society was launched a couple days ago and some noticed that the current Windows Phone 7 devices were not able to connect to IPv6 routers. Today we see that there's information on MSDN that suggests the Windows Phone 7 Mango update will support IPv6 after all. Converting to IPv6 will take a pretty long time anyway, so we're sure your Windows Phones will get updated with the fix before it becomes a real necessity.