Most of the users still stick to the regular search, but that’s only because they haven’t discovered the search options yet.

Today, Google extended the availability of these search options for iPhone, WebOS and Android users. These options are currently available to the users in US only and will be extended to a wider audience in the coming months.

This certainly improves the performance and helps users accelerate through the searches on their mobile phones.  Also, the advantage of having your searches sync is that you can sometimes start where you left off on the PC or simply run through the search history.

The suggestions shown on the phone interface are personalized based on your search history. See the image below to know what I mean…

Users should be logged into their Google accounts to be able to take advantage of this feature and understandably logins should be the same on the phone and PC to see the correct information in terms of Search History and Personalized Suggestions!

Such small, yet intelligent features keep Google ahead of its competition and thats what I love about Google!

Behold – The3rd Android Powered Phone is on its way to hit the markets. HTC has announced its next Android Phone, the HTC Hero, at a press event in London this month. It features the Google-based Android Operating System, which is designed to bless you with pocket able desktop like experience and carry out tasks easily.

It is a smart touch screen phone that boasts a five-megapixel auto-focus camera letting you to easily capture and add high quality images and video to your gallery. It has 3.2-inch TFT-LCD display with a screen resolution of 320×480 pixels for sharp and bright viewing.

It is powered by Qualcomm’s MSM7200A 528MHz processor which is paired with 512MB ROM and 288MB RAM to give you a smoother and powerful UI experience. A built-in GPS and Digital Compass can be used for simple navigation or you may like to footprint your frequent destinations over its extended maps support.

The user interface is iPhone like smooth at transitions between the screens and comes with a personalized home screen which swanks innumerous customizable widgets like weather, Twitter, Facebook and more.

The on-screen QWERTY keyboard is comfortable enough to type your mails and messages with ease, wish it works equally fine in landscape mode also.

The HTC hero also features a dedicated search button which functions much like the Spotlight feature in the iPhone, thus enabling you to search for a given content in contacts, e-mails, twitter and elsewhere.

The conventional headset jacks of HTC phones which also double as mini-USB port for USB 2.0 connectivity have a new neighbor, a standard 3.5mm jack.

The accelerometer feature of the phone can sense the position of the phone in your hand – whether landscape or portrait. It has 512MB of internal memory which can be integrated with a microSD memory card for up to 16GB.

It is Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi enabled. Listen to the enormous collection on your phone over a Bluetooth Stereo Headset from the gallery or even download the latest from the web with ease.

The phone is angled at its bottom which adds to its stylish design and comfort while making a call. Even better, you can turn the phone face down to put it silent.

It is the first phone to come with a Teflon-coating on its body and a ‘smudge-repelling’ screen. It is also the first phone that comes with Adobe Flash support allowing you to fully access websites loaded with animation and flash content, whether you like to play an embedded video or get your hands on some online flash games.

Network support includes HSPA (900/1200MHz), quad band GSM/EDGE. Orange will be the network launch partner for the HTC Hero, which is expected to offer network services in varied services including free availability of network services on selected price plans.

It will be available in 7 different colors including Black, White, Yellow, Pink, Gold, Red and Turquoise and will make its debut with the European Market in July, followed by Asia and the US, later in 2009. However there were no details on price or availability of the HTC Hero yet.

Watch the following video to see HTC Hero in action.

People who use Gmail mobile application for other platforms will know that each time you want to check for new e-mail the application needs to be refreshed, but not on Android platform. This application introduces a feature “Push e-mail” which keeps you updated with the new emails without a refresh.

Other features include Notifications, Address Autocomplete, Viewing Attachments, etc..

Watch the video below to see this application in action:

The application promises to bring the power of almost all the features on the desktop software and the freedom to fly over any part of the world with the latest imagery and 3D terrain, read about each place you browse through on Wikipedia, etc..

Here are a few things you can do with Google Earth for iPhone

• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the ‘Location’ feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

iPhone is certainly one of the most popular and powerful phone exists in the market today, however, with the launch of Android G1 recently it would be interesting to see if Google adds to the list of existing iPhone applications or focuses more on Android platform to attract crowds.

FYI..  I tried visiting the link to iTunes store mentioned on Google Blog but encountered an error 3212 on iTunes as shows below. This could be because of the antiviurs blocking iTunes from going onoine.

Watch the video below to see how Google Earth works on iPhone and click here to download the app

Not that this strategy has only cons, but being traditional and tightly controlling the applications that run on iPhone could make developers demotivated to develop such applications. However, this would also mean that the quality of applications on iPhone remains standardized. Android, if I am not wrong will take a different strategy. Instead of controlling android application through a store, Google will let the users decide if they want the application or not just like the google desktop gadgets

Let us look at some of the Android applications which have the potential of making it big. So what it takes for an application to make it big. We are going to try to decide this based on usability.

BioWallet

Category: Security Utility

Developed By: Jose Luis Huertas Fernandez

License: Free

This is a like a password to your Android phone. All you have to do is to take a picture of your eye ball (iris) and set it up as a password to your android and android applications. It’ll only allow an authentication when it matches the iris of your eye scanned using your android camera.

BreadCrumbz

Developed By: Amos Yoffe

Categories: GPS and Maps

License: Free

And I used to think that the only way to get to places and know about them was using maps and GPS. However, BreadCrumbz takes it to a whole new level. Instead of using a map you can use pictures to know about places. It’s more or less like a guide which tells you a great lot of things about a particular place you are visiting. You can also create routes and send them to your friends.

This might not be as great for car drivers as it would be for pedestrians and cyclist. It can also give you voice instructions to help you navigate when you are driving. Because this takes advantage of community development and sharing it has a great potential to grow.

CallACab/Cab4Me

Developed By: Konrad Hubner , Henning Boger

Categories: Travel and Cabs

License: Free

If you are caught up in an alien city and have no clue about how to get a cab or how to call for a cab, this application will come to your rescue. It’s aware of the location and doesn’t need you tell the cab service about your location. Calling cabs can’t get easier than this.

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Eco2Go/Ecorio

Developed By:

Application is currently running in sunrise testing phase for the closed user group. In case you are interested in testing this application out as a sunrise tester, shoot an e-mail at mail [at] twitroid.com.

This applications does all the regular stuff that a regular Twitter application is expected to do + it lets you post pictures to twitter from within the application. The photo service is comes from a Twitroid exclusive service called photroid.com

The application is expected to hit the market before the phone is launched, that is before 22nd of October.

Android is expected to attract more developers in the long run as the platform is embraced by a lot of phone manafacturers and we will start seeing phones being released based on Android platofrm, in simple words Android application market is expected to be bigger than iPhone Apps.

The phone is priced at $179 + Taxes and Fees. Phone is available with a 2 years contract and will be delivered at your doorstep by 22nd of October, that’s in a month!

Phone will not only be available at T-Mobile.com starting 22nd October, but also at its partner stores.

Here is the list of features offered by G1

• Touch Screen
  Easy access to most used and accessed applications or information
• Real Web browsing capabilities
• 3MP Camera
• Customizable Home Screen
  Drag and drop your favorite photos, applications or folders onto your home screen to customize it.
• QWERTY Keyboard
• Easy access to Google applications (as expected)
• IM/text/e-mail
• Music Player
  Store tons of songs on the 1GB memory card on the phone.
• One-click Google Search
• Video Playback
• 3G Network and Wi-Fi access
• Android Market Place

You can pre-order the phone and be one of the first to get the phone. Click here to pre-order G1.

For developers, click here to get to the developers section of Android and keep the cool apps coming. Visit T-Mobile to know more and see the phone in action.

Apple has created an unbelievable buzz around iPhone and continues to sustain it with the latest release. It’s also trying to reach to the masses by reducing the price and make more money from the services offered for iPhone. Also, we will soon start to see the accessories echo system built around iPhone just as we saw in the case of iPods. But what about Android? don’t you think Google will put its best foot forward with Android?

Google took a smarter root to capture the mobile market, it very clearly understood that its not necessary to sell your own hardware to capture the mobile market but the software is more important. Android was the result of this smart thinking and companies like Nokia, Samsung and other major mobile brands got onboard quickly.

So, when Apple sells one iPhone there can be 5 other companies trying to sell their phones with Android loaded on it.

Eventually Android will take the lead because of the support it will get from the open source and mobile companies and also because I wouldn’t want to buy a phone (iPhone) which millions of people already have it but with Android its possible to have a Phone which is not common and still have Android on it.