Google I/O 2011 T-shirt puzzle solved, reveals the droid you’ve been looking for originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 May 2011 23:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just last week, we asked the question if the world needs yet another mobile operating system (Samsung’s Bada). Now it turns out Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier, NTT DoCoMo, apparently thinks the answer is yes. The telecom behemoth (55 million customers in Japan) today announced [press release in English] the development of a brand new “application platform for mobile phones”, which is planned to go global, too.

We’ve written about the Viper SmartStart system before. It’s the $30-per-year iPhone/BlackBerry app that, when paired with a $500 component in your car, ensures that you never have to worry about strenuous nonsense like turning a key to start your car or unlock your doors ever again.

Up until this point, its been a one way deal. You can tell your car to turn on and fire up the AC, or use your alarm to scare the hell out of people in parking lots miles away – but what if your car wanted to talk back to you?

Now it can!

Read the rest at Mobilecrunch >>

NOOOOOOOOOOO.

There I was, letting myself get excited about possibility of HTC acquiring Palm. I mean, can you imagine webOS on HTC-made hardware? I’d buy one for each hand. Alas, those hopes and dreams have been dashed.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

A lot has been written on how the iPhone performs in Japan, the world’s most advanced mobile nation, but the general consensus in this country now is that it sells very well (even though both Apple and provider SoftBank Mobile refuse to break down Japan-specific sales numbers). It’s rumored that the number of iPhones sold in Japan has passed 3 million.

There are reasons for this success (super-low pricing, aggressive marketing, Apple’s pre-iPhone brand popularity in Japan, clever product positioning by SoftBank, etc. etc.), but we’re talking about a country in which basically every cell phone is a smartphone, a country where you’d be hard-pressed to find a handset without a digital TV tuner or e-wallet function, for example.

It looks like some internal Dell material has spilled out onto the internet, but am I the only one who finds this stuff suspect? I see lots of spelling errors and some questionable features. The vagueness of some of the specs and the very un-Dell phrasing of a lot of this stuff makes me think this is an outside contractor pitching Dell with some design ideas. If they are real, I’m guessing this is a mockup team inside Dell that’s pitching mobile division higher-ups with their idea of where Dell should be heading in the smartphone world. At any rate, there are pretty pictures, so let’s take a look.

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