Here’s something almost ironic:

Motorola announced that it will have Microsoft’s Bing search and map services for their Android smartphones in China. This announcement is also on top of Motorola’s recent announcement to include China’s search provider, Baidu.com, in its phones in China.

What’s the point in having Google set up a “free and open” OS if companies use other search services? Could Google still profit from it?

Things are starting to heat up a bit as the Apple iPad is set to be released. PC makers like HP are all prepping their vision of the tablet PC by leaking photos and offering bloggers to test drive their new gadgets. Articles are popping up either predicting success or failure of the iPad while pointing out why a particular device will win over the iPad.

One such article came out a few weeks ago.  Well known technology analyst, Robert Enderle wrote how Apple got it all wrong when compared to Dell’s soon-to-be released Mini 5.

What should Apple have done, according to Robert Enderle? Apple should have made a slightly larger iPhone than a mega sized iPod.  The Dell does exactly that, making the Mini 5  an ultraportable device with a good size screen that would make a nice compliment for someone with a smartphone, a laptop and Amazon’s Kindle:

The Dell Mini 5 loads Google apps which should also scale relatively easily from a 3.5” screen to a 5” screen. You can put the Dell Mini in a belt pouch (big one), battery life seems to be similar to a screen phone and likely not yet optimized, and it is vastly better than an iPhone (thanks to its larger screen) for browsing, watching video, gaming (assuming you can find good games) and typing. 

It is also substantially better for us old farts who don’t like to wear glasses. At 5” the screen is 90% larger which is really what makes a lot of things better. It multi-tasks, has two cameras (one a 5 mega pixel with twin LED lights and digital zoom – the other for video conferencing), and both a removable battery and expandable memory.  

But it is the fact that you can toss your phone and replace it with this device that makes it work otherwise you have to carry another largely redundant device with yet another dataplan.

It should be interesting how it turns out. There is a place for both of these devices. The iPad has brought a lot of attention to tablet PC’s this year. It may finally be the time that tablet PC’s will become more mainstream as Bill Gates had predicted almost ten years ago, but instead of devices just running a desktop version of Windows, we’ve also going to have devices running at least Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone OS or Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. It’s going to be a good year!

There’s an article on Liliputing.com about trademark issues with the Smartbook. What’s a Smartbook, you may ask?

On one hand, Smartbook is the name of a German hardware company, on the other, it’s what some companies are calling netbooks that have built in 3G mobile broadband connectivity via the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. Examples include the Lenovo Skylight and the Compaq Airlife 100.

DTN protocol will be used with Google's OS to increase interplanetary communication.

The iPhone competitor hit the shelves today, much to the delight and curiosity of tech bloggers.