Apple does a billion, T-Mobile does a million and Paul van Dyk's DJ app is very useful
It's the weekly Pocket Picks round-up
As announcements go, selling a billion of anything is a mighty big thing to celebrate. True to form however, Apple didn't get carried away with the billionth download from the App Store. Truth be told, it actually switched the counter off a couple of thousand clicks early and replaced it with a static 'Thanks a billion' image.
Cheers
Smaller figures were also getting us interested this week. T-Mobile US announced it had sold a million G1 phones, while it also sent a bill of $26,000 to Nick Andes because he had somehow managed to send 140,000 text messages in a month. Luckily he pointed out he had an unlimited message plan.
In the UK, the competition to spread the smartphone message to the masses was the big news of the week. Vodafone unveiled its contract plan for the G2 phone. The cheapest deal works out at £630 for the phone and an 18 month contract.
On the other hand, T-Mobile UK announced an interesting annual deal with RIM that nets you a BlackBerry Pearl 8110 and unlimited email and internet for £180. You pay voice and messaging on top of this however. Still the initiative, which will be marketed under the term Pay Once looks significant, especially as and when more advanced handsets are rolled into play.
Orange got funky with its £50 Vegas touchscreen device. It's not a great phone in terms of technical features but you'll get Bebo, Facebook and MySpace access for free so it looks like a good deal for PAYG customers, despite the 1.3MP camera and 128MB of internal memory.
Elsewhere in the world of accessories, I was enjoying my new hard graft felt Y phone pouch. It really is a wonderful thing. I reckon even Paul van Dyk would like it. He was on YouTube promoting his soon-to-be-released PvD DJ app. He says it's very useful.
On the tasty front this week, Tracy reviewed the Sushipedia iPhone/iPod touch app, which despite listing fugu misses out puffy orange sea urchin rolls. Tracy wasn't happy. The ability to snap photos of your own sushi and leverage GPS to mark the location at which you scarfed it down sounds great though.
Another high-ranking app - at least for UK TV watchers - was the Radio Times app (iPhone/iPod touch). Even if you don't watch UK TV, it's worth checking out for the information flow, but getting the on-demand iPlayer was the killer feature for us.
In fact, we're off to watch Don Draper right now. There's a man who would know how to celebrate a billion.
