Android is on the upswing, having become the fastest growing smartphone platform among its contemporaries in the U.S market. While it has a fair distance to go before it can overtake the Apple iPhone, it is more a question of when than if, given the speed of its ascent.

But Apple can be expected to pull out all the stops to retain its comfortable lead over its younger rival. Earlier this month, it dragged Taiwanese phone maker HTC to court, alleging that its Android phones infringe nearly 20 of its patents. It wants a ban on the import of all such HTC handsets that infringe the iPhone-related patents.

Although HTC is yet to officially respond in court, the phone maker from the Far East has finally broken its silence over the lawsuit. It should not surprise anyone that HTC disagrees with Apple's claims and  remains unfazed. It has vowed to “fully defend” itself.

“HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation.

The press release appears to be a reminder of HTC's ability to innovate to anyone who doubts it. It quite proudly points out “HTC’s technology firsts” that  include the first Windows PDA (1998), first 3G CDMA EVDO smartphone (October 2005), first Google Android smartphone and first 4G WIMAX smartphone (November 2008).

Google likes to refer to the Nexus One as a "superphone," but there's nothing super about the sales figure. On the contrary, sales of the Nexus One will probably be around 1-1.2 million during its first year of release. That's a good chunk less than the 2.5-3.5 million units many had originally projected.

Google may have shot itself in the foot in a number of ways, the first of which is offering the Nexus One as an online-only item. That's fine for geeks, but does nothing for the average smartphone owner who prefers to roll old school by walking into an actual store front.

Numerous other factors have held the Nexus One back, including a high unsubsidized price tag, initially limiting the device to T-Mobile, limiting the upgrade pricing to only those on an Individual 500 plan, and implementing their own termination fee in addition to any applicable carrier fees.

The latest announcement from the Google camp is that a second Nexus One model is now being offered, one that is compatible with AT&T's 3G network. But so far only offered at the unsubsidized price of $529, it's difficult to see this move reversing the Nexus One's sales fortunes.

Image Credit: Google

Having already conquered most of the online world, Google's developers are looking for new territory to invade, and they may have found it in your living room.

According to a report in The New York Times, Google has buddied up with Intel and Sony to develop a new platform called Google TV. Unlike existing televisions and set-top boxes with limited Web content, Google TV is being designed as an open TV platform based on Android.

Citing a "person with knowledge of the project," NYT says Google TV will use a version of Google's Chrome browser, even though it doesn't yet work on Android phones.

Other details remain pretty sparse, but those willing to speak about the project (anonymously, of course) say the technology is far enough along that Google has been able to begin a limited test run with Dish Network.

More here.

If you haven't done so already, be sure to grab the latest Chrome browser update (Tools Menu > About Google Chrome) and upgrade to version 4.1.249.1036. Included in the latest update are several security fixes, including five "high" priority ones. These include:

• Race conditions and pointer errors int he sandbox infrastructure
• Memory error with malformed SVG
• Integer overflows in WebKit JavaScript objects
• Cross-origin bypass
• Memory error with empty SVG element

Also bundled in are three "medium" priority and one "low" priority security fixes, but it's the high priority ones that translated into cold hard cash for the individuals who discovered them. Sergey Glazunov, for example, received a $1337 "Chromium Security Reward" for discovering the integer overflows in WebKit JavaScript objects, while the other high priority bugs netted anywhere from $500 to $1000 for their discovery.

The latest Chrome release also comes with a few new features, including a translate infobar, certain privacy features, and disabling the experimental anti-reflected-XSS feature called "XSS Auditor."

Google Gesture search for Android was released just about two weeks ago to largely positive reviews. The free app allows users to draw a character on the screen and have it recognized and used to search the phone. It is very accurate and stable, but the only problem was that it could only be used on Android 2.0 and higher phones. That means only the Nexus One and Droid. But yesterday evening El Goog decided to make it available to users of Android 1.6.

Not only that, but the app is available in all countries where the Android Market is available. The new version also includes various performance improvements and bug fixes. We’re stoked that users of the venerable G1 and HTC Magic can get in on the gesture search action, but those running 1.5 based Sense UI and MotoBlur devices are still left out in the cold. HTC and Motorola are expected to release 2.1 based updates to their Android skins in the coming months. Until then, let’s spare their feelings and downplay how cool Gesture Search is

Need more evidence that Facebook rules the Internet? Try this one on for size. According to research firm Hitwise, Google blinked, and Facebook leapfrogged ahead of the search engine as the most popular destination on the Web.

Combined, the two sites accounted for 14 percent of all U.S. traffic last week, but individually, Facebook nudged ahead of the search giant by claiming 7.07 percent of the hits compared to Google's 7.03 percent.

This marks the first time Facebbok has ever been able to outpace Google for a week, and likely not the last. While the lead is small, Facebook continues to trend upwards, having grown from a little over 2 percent a year ago. Not only that, but Facebook's membership has more than doubled in the past year as well.

Not surprisingly, users are also spending more time on Facebook, logging on average almost 6.5 hours per week, compared to less than 2.5 hours on Google.

Image Credit: justgetthere.com

Need more evidence that Facebook rules the Internet? Try this one on for size. According to research firm Hitwise, Google blinked, and Facebook leapfrogged ahead of the search engine as the most popular destination on the Web.

Combined, the two sites accounted for 14 percent of all U.S. traffic last week, but individually, Facebook nudged ahead of the search giant by claiming 7.07 percent of the hits compared to Google's 7.03 percent.

This marks the first time Facebbok has ever been able to outpace Google for a week, and likely not the last. While the lead is small, Facebook continues to trend upwards, having grown from a little over 2 percent a year ago. Not only that, but Facebook's membership has more than doubled in the past year as well.

Not surprisingly, users are also spending more time on Facebook, logging on average almost 6.5 hours per week, compared to less than 2.5 hours on Google.

Image Credit: justgetthere.com

With little fanfare, Google has announced a version of the Nexus One compatible with AT&T’s 3G bands. The only version available previously was only able to get speedy 3G on T-Mobile. Pricing remains the same as the T-Mobile version at $529 for the unlocked phone. However, there is no carrier tie in here as there was for T-Mobile. This means that you won’t be able to opt for a subsidy on the handset in exchange for signing a contract. Google claims to be working with AT&T on a possible subsidy deal.

The T-Mobile version apparently sold only 135,000 units since release. With the phone now fully compatible with one of the largest carriers in the US, those lackluster sales may pick up a bit. Versions of the Nexus One are also slated to be released for Vodafone in Europe and Verizon in the US.

If you are currently an AT&T customer, a quick SIM card swap should get you up and running. New Customers will have to buy a $25 SIM card. So, are you Android faithful tempted by this, or are you holding out for the Verizon compatible handset?

It’s amazing what the high profile launch of a smartphone can do for a mobile platform. According to numbers that come straight from The Big G, the number of Android apps has more than doubled since December. This leaves it hovering somewhere around 30,000. Most of this growth is almost certainly thanks to the massive number of Droid sales. The Android Market may not have 150,000 apps like the iPhone App Store, but still quite a feat.

Android tends to have a higher ratio of free to paid apps than other application stores, so many of these new apps are available free of charge. Will the trend continue, or are we likely to see short bursts of app development around big phone releases? Google is doing their part by handing out Droids and Nexus Ones to successful developers. Where’s the tipping point where number don’t matter anymore? There will be a point that everything you need will be on various mobile platforms. The question is: does Android have what you need?

Like all Google products, it's still a bit beta

On paper, Google’s new Nexus One is the smartphone to beat. It’s got a gorgeous screen, a svelte formfactor, and the hottest phone operating system on the planet, Android 2.1. Unfortunately, just like the Motorola Droid, the Nexus One has some problems that prevent us from recommending it wholeheartedly.

Let’s start with the awesome. The Nexus One’s screen, a 3.7-inch 800x480 active-matrix OLED display, is undeniably gorgeous, rendering pitch-perfect colors at high resolution in a way that makes the iPhone 3GS screen look simply sad by comparison. The Nexus One runs a Qualcomm QSD 8250 at 1GHz, comes with 512MB of RAM and 512MB of onboard flash, and includes a user-upgradeable 4GB MicroSD card. All this is packed into an HTC-designed body that’s slimmer than an iPhone 3GS and waaaay sexier than the Droid.

The Android OS itself continues to impress. The 2.1 edition spit-shines the improvements to 2.0. We dig the speedier application menu and the dynamic wallpaper, which uses cues from the music you’re listening to or the time of day to render interesting (but ultimately useless) visualizations behind your home screen. There are a few more substantial updates, as well—most notably, every text field in the phone is voice enabled. While this won’t make in-car Twittering any safer (you still need to navigate to the right fields with your fingers), we found the feature occasionally useful, especially in the navigation app. It’s worth mentioning that the voice recognition all happens server-side, so even though it’s pretty accurate, it takes a moment or two to complete.

The Application menu in Android 2.1 received some cosmetic and performance improvements. Icons seem to scroll up and over a 3D cube, rather than up a flat surface.

The best thing about Android continues to be the ability for third-party developers to integrate their apps with the phone’s native apps. The widgets that have been part of Android since version 1.5 even allow you to customize your phone’s home screen, something that’s notably missing from the iPhone.

While the Android Marketplace now has more than 14,000 apps, the viewer software does a poor job of promoting the good apps and burying the bad. We still don’t know how to sort by user rating or popularity, and the editorially driven selections are not compelling. All the applications in the world won’t help your platform if your users can’t find the awesome ones, Google.

Android includes a car-friendly nav menu that puts the apps you frequently use in a car at hand, so it is ever-so-slightly less dangerous when you use the phone while driving.

We also experienced some pretty serious problems with the onscreen keyboard, on three separate occasions, with multiple handsets. It simply stopped registering touches accurately, which made it impossible to type. The problem was sporadic and difficult to reproduce but it was annoying as hell. We haven’t experienced the problem since applying the multitouch update, but it’s a serious enough problem that it warrants mentioning. We also feel that the soft buttons on the screen’s fascia (Back, Menu, Home, and Search) are placed too high. It’s too easy to accidently tap them when you hit the keyboard.

Of course, the worst of it is that this Nexus One is really only usable on T-Mobile’s limited network for now. AT&T users can buy it unlocked but will be limited to EDGE speeds. The good news is that the Nexus One is coming out in Verizon trim this spring, with an AT&T version on tap, too. Having this phone on a more capable network would push the Nexus One up in value. Still, as is, even with its little foibles, the Nexus One is clearly the best Android-phone yet.