Google Android’s remarkable year continues, with smart phones that run the operating system making up a quarter of the world market. The number of Android smart phones shipped in the third quarter of 2010 grew a staggering 1,309 per cent year-on-year, from 1.4 million to more than 20 million, according to a Canalys report. It …

You can tell a game has made it when it starts receiving real-life geek adoration. Cakes are baked. Plush toys appear on desks of IT departments. In the most extreme cases, grown men and women dress up as the game’s characters. So Angry Birds has officially made it: two very strange men have created Halloween costumes of the annoyed avians. …

Our opinion of the Nokia N8 has been hotly debated, but we’ve always maintained the hardware is brilliant. Now, a new short film has been released on YouTube, showcasing the phone’s impressive 12-megapixel camera. The Commuter was shot entirely on the Nokia N8, utilising the phone’s 720p HD video-recording capability. It’s actually a very entertaining little action movie, starring Slumdog …

The dream of a London Underground network that is totally Internet connected will be a step closer to reality next week, as BT announced Charing Cross would be the first Tube station to have Wi-Fi access. The service is due to start on 1 November and will be trialled for six months, allowing people to log on to the Internet …

A Samsung-made Google Nexus Two will launch on 8 November and be sold exclusively through the Carphone Warehouse, if various reports this week are to be believed. The first suggestion of a sequel to the Google Nexus One was from London free paper City AM, which reported an ‘industry source’ saying the second Google phone will hit the UK before …

Nobody thinks much about the auto-brightness feature on a smart phone. But you should do, as screen brightness is one of the main ways to run down the battery. Unfortunately for iPhone and Android users, a new report has come to light claiming the auto-brightness feature on these handsets is “close to functionally useless”. This is because smart phone manufacturers …

Apple could be developing a built-in SIM card for the iPhone that would allow European users to switch networks without having to swap SIMs. According to GigaOM‘s sources inside European carriers, Apple is working on the project with SIM-card manufacturer Gemalto. Apparently, the aim is to reduce the role of operators in the process of purchasing and using an iPhone. You’d be able …

When we first heard rumours of a Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone, we were a bit wary. In the back of our minds we thought it might be the ravings of someone driven mad by Angry Birds. Was it too good to be true? Had it finally come? Yes: pictures and specs of the device have emerged, which Engadget has categorically …

Apple briefly let a few old-school gamers wallow in geek heaven by allowing an MS DOS emulator into the App Store, and then promptly booted it out, shattering the dreams of classic PC fans everywhere. iDOS allowed programs written for the old DOS operating system to run on on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, including Windows 3.0. It seems …

The number of apps in the Android Market has now hit 100,000.  Google announced the milestone in a post on its Android Developer Twitter account. The figure still leaves Android apps a long way behind iPhone apps in terms of quantity — Steve Jobs said last week that there were 300,000 apps in Apple’s App Store. The creation of 100,000 apps — a …