Opera have announced that a beta version of the Opera Mini 5 browser has now been released to the Android Market.  Opera Mini 5 uses Opera’s compression tech, which redirects webpage requests through the company’s servers where they are compressed to reduce their size, before they are sent back to your mobile.  The idea being that pages load quicker, although there are compromises in that images are also compressed.
Some of the features of Opera Mini 5 include- tabbed browsing, a download manager and “Speed Dial”, which is essentially just a …

Derek Brown and Dany Tijerina of computer security firm TippingPoint, have managed to convince just under 8000 smartphone users to download and install an app called WeatherFist, which, as you’d expect, is a weather forecast app.  But, it’s not just giving it’s users weather forecasts, it’s also been uploading their GPS coordinates and telephone numbers to a TippingPoint server.
The app was put together as a proof of concept botnet as part of a presentation at last week’s RSA Conference.  Brown and Tijerina claim that it would be a simple matter …

Mobile games developers Polarbit today released a statement that their Android games have surpassed 1 million downloads from the Android Market. Polarbit are the team behind some very popular 3D games such as Raging Thunder and Armageddon Squadron.
Click the link for the full press release.

Following on from Gamevil’s recent announcement that an Android version of Zenonia will be released later this month, we thought we’d take the opportunity to find out a little bit more about the company and their plans for their Android titles. Gamevil have a few Android games on the market already, including the very popular Baseball Superstars. Kyu Lee, President of Gamevil USA, kindly agreed to answer a few of our questions.
Click the link to see the full interview.

According to market analysts, Flurry, Android new boy, the Nexus One’s first week sales were a disappointingly low 20,000 units.  The Nexus One is receiving a lot of attention in the media at the moment, but if this estimate is even remotely close to the mark, then the media hype hasn’t converted to sales.  Google have yet to confirm or dispute this estimate, and I doubt they’ll bother.
The DROID, by comparison, sold 250,000 unts in it’s first week, but it was backed by Verizon’s $100 million DROID Does ad campaign.  …

Anyone who has been perusing the Google support forums lately will know that, despite the media’s lovefest for the Nexus One, there are a growing number of users who are not so pleased with the phone.  Or at least, with Google’s after-sale support for it.  Google are selling the phone directly to customers, but they haven’t got a dedicated customer services/support department for the phone in their infrastructure, an oversight that is causing consternation for many users, particularly in light of the fact the phone carriers, such as Vodafone, are …

This week’s CrankyGeeks episode features, among other guests, Google Open source boss, Chris DiBona.  The guests discuss some new phone that’s just been released which you may not have heard about, called the Nexus One, but more importantly, the journos present also took the opportunity to press DiBona about two of the more talked about issues surrounding Android at the moment: how must Motorola feel following the release of the Android 2.1-powered Nexus One?  And, what are Google’s thoughts on Android OS version fragmentation and it’s affects on attracting developers …