The N92 is the Verizon iPhone

The Verizon iPhone drumbeat continues as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber says that Apple is indeed working on a CDMA variant of the iPhone 4, dubbed internally the “N92.” While the device is not in device testing yet — that’s the level where engineers like Gray Powell take them out into the wild — it is at engineering-level testing right now.

Gruber speculates this is where the phone would need to be in order to make it to a January 2011 release, which seems to be the date many are fixated on for its release. He cautions however that the news does not necessarily mean Verizon’s getting it: there are other CDMA carriers after all.

Gartner: Smartphone Sales Surging, Especially Android

Research firm Gartner said Thursday that smartphone sales are up some 50 percent year-over-year, with Android showing explosive growth and topping Apple in the quarter ending June 30 for the first time in the history of the company’s survey. Gartner is only the latest in a line of outfits to confirm Android’s stratospheric rise.

Growth year-over-year is a stunning 850 percent. Last year at this time, Android accounted for only 1.8 percent of the market. This year? 17.2 percent. That was enough to put it in third place overall. Symbian led all with a 41.2 percent share, followed by RIM with 18.2 percent. Both were down from a year ago.

iOS slipped into fourth place with a 14.2 percent share, however it was up just over a percentage point from the year previous. Gartner cautioned that its numbers could have been stunted by consumers holding purchases off for the iPhone 4, and limited availability once it was released.

“We expect that a wider global roll-out of iPhone 4 will sustain Apple’s sales momentum throughout the second half of 2010,” the company wrote in its report.

Obviously, it’s Android’s non exclusive strategy that is really paying off for Google here. But lets wait another quarter until we see the first indications of iPhone 4′s effect on sales before we pass judgement. Add to this simply releasing the iPhone on Verizon as rumored could put iPhone back on top very quick, and it just seems too early to tell…

A Sony Ericsson Playstation Phone Wishlist

The folks at Sony Ericsson had a novel idea, according to Engadget’s tipsters: Build a smartphone running Android 3.0, add a sliding set of game controls instead of a physical keyboard, open a section of the Android Market specifically for this phone’s games, and put the weight of Sony’s Playstation brand behind it. And just like that, the PSP Phone has its most credible rumor yet.

Engadget’s Josh Topolsky says Sony Ericsson’s gaming phone could arrive as early as October, which means we’ve got a few months to speculate wildly on the missing details (the image here is just a mockup). Here’s what I would like to see in the fabled Playstation phone:

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Live Google Mobile Event Coverage

Quick reminder: I’ll be liveblogging Google’s mobile-related press event this morning. It starts in less than ninety minutes at 10amPT–join us at Technologizer.com/googlemobile.

iPadversaries! 32 Tablets, Slates, Pads, and More

Why are iPads selling as fast as Apple’s Chinese subcontractors can crank them out? In part, it’s because the iPad has a suddenly-hot product category pretty much to itself. Before scuttlebutt that Apple was working on a tablet started to heat up, no major PC manufacturer seemed to think that consumers wanted a general-purpose, touchscreen-only computing device. Now almost all the big names–and lots of little ones–are furiously playing catch up.

End result: Starting later this year, the iPad will be confronted by an army of other touchscreen machines, from potentially worthy opponents to shameless wannabees. Call ‘em iPadversaries, and read on for my first stab at accounting for (most of) them.
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Apple TV to Become the App-Filled iTV?

It looks like Apple’s trying to put down the legacy of Apple TV as the company tries a new push into the living room.

Engadget’s got some more rumors on the project, which will reportedly be dubbed iTV when it’s revealed this fall. We previously heard that Apple was slimming down the television set-top with iPhone-like specs, including an A4 processor and 16 GB of flash memory. Now, Josh Topolsky’s unnamed tipster says iTV will definitely support apps. Whether they’ll be iTV originals or iPhone/iPad converts is unknown.

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Heeeeeeeere’s Johnny! Again!

Wouldn’t it be cool if every significant TV show of the past sixty years was available in its entirety (or at least everything that survives) on the Web?

Amazon, the Gadget Maker?

Amazon may have got a taste of gadget success with its hugely popular Kindle, and that may lead to more products coming out of the company, Nick Bilton writes for the New York Times’ Bits blog. The company is currently doing a significant amount of hiring in its Lab 126 division (that’s where the Kindle was made), and insiders say its just not new Kindles they’ll all be working on.

According to Bilton’s sources, the company has already looked into producing MP3 players, portable electronics, and even an Amazon phone. The phone is probably the biggest stretch for them, but hasn’t been 100% ruled out just yet. Either way, the company’s moves are all about protecting its position in the digital content space. Guess they’re just not all about books anymore, eh?

Broadband Adoption Slows as Market Saturates

Broadband adoption has begun to slow in the US, with 66 percent of all adults now subscribing to broadband at home. That was the finding of the Pew Internet & American Life project, who said the 3 percent year-over-year increase was the smallest since 2005.

This compares to a 8 percent increase in both 2007 to 2008 and 2008 to 2009. The slowdown may have something to do with the economy, however it probably also means that the market is beginning to saturate, and those that want or need broadband are already subscribed to it.

Another key fact in the study is that overall, US adults believe that the expansion of broadband should not be a priority, with 52 percent responding that way. Interestingly enough, seniors are the most against it with only 21 percent saying it should be a priority and 64 percent against, and respondents aged 18-29 the most supportive with a 48-46 split.

The only demographic group to show a major uptick in broadband usage were African Americans, who saw 22 percent year-over-year growth. The so called digital divide is also narrowing: it is down to an 11-point gap from 19 points the year previous according to the study.

The full report’s PDF can be found here.

Duke Nukem Forever Lives On in Rumor

I have a hard time imagining a world in which Duke Nukem Forever exists. Part of me prefers that it remains a notorious example of vaporware, rather than a game you can actually play.

Yet the tale of Duke Nukem Forever is so legendary, the brand so enduring, that I’m not surprised another developer is reportedly picking up where 3D Realms left off after 12 years of development. Citing unnamed sources, Kotaku reports that Gearbox, the studio behind Borderlands and several well-received Half-Life expansion packs, is now working on Duke Nukem Forever.

Gearbox would be a logical choice given that Take-Two Interactive, which published Borderlands, still owns the publishing rights to Duke Nukem Forever. The path to development was cleared when Take-Two settled a lawsuit with developer 3D Realms/Apogee in May, over the game’s failure to launch. No one’s confirming the rumor, but Gearbox president Randy Pitchford told Kotaku that he might clarify the matter next month, at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle.

The problem with Duke Nukem Forever, as a game, is that it isn’t really a game. Duke Nukem Forever is a story of the game industry’s astounding evolution over the last dozen years, and one company’s futile race to keep up with an ever-climbing bar. In the hands of another developer, the perpetual drive for better and more is lost, along with Duke Nukem Forever’s soul.

Of course, I’d still play the game, but mostly for the spectacle, and maybe some closure. If Gearbox announces Duke Nukem Forever next month, the only outcome I’ll fully accept is stalled development leading to oblivion — a cruel joke to keep the legend alive. That’s the Duke Nukem Forever I know.

TIME and Me

Neat news: Starting next month, I’ll be contributing to TIME.com, including writing a weekly tech column. It should be a lot of fun–I’ll let you know when my stuff starts to show up there…

Blockbuster May Be Bankrupt Soon

On second thought, Blockbuster’s game-and-movie mail-order plan seems a little shaky if the rental chain is really about to file for bankruptcy, as analysts predict.

Que ProReader Nevermore: Plastic Logic Gives Up

I kind of figured I was going to type these words sooner or later: Plastic Logic has canceled its Que e-reader. The company began demoing its gadget almost two years ago, well before the iPad era. But after multiple delays, it’s decided that the fast-evolving e-reader market has rendered the Que obsolete before it ever shipped. It says it’ll be back with a “second-generation” reader. And it’s finally figured out that it’s a bad idea to say when it expects to ship it.

(Sorry, Plastic Logic: You don’t get to call a product “second generation” when the first one didn’t ship. The first Que turned out to be a failed prototype. The next one, if any, will be the first-gen version.)

The Que had an oversized E-Ink screen, a focus on business users, a slick user interface, and unique plastic-electronics technology. Plastic Logic never explained why it couldn’t release the thing when it thought it would–it may just have been that the company was far better at drumming up hoopla than it was at setting a realistic development schedule for an ambitious gadget. In retrospect, it would have been a lot more efficient if the company had decided it would need to start over back on January 27th, the day Apple announced the iPad.

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What Will Google Announce This Thursday?

On this Thursday at 10am PT, Google will be holding an event at its San Francisco offices to announce “a couple of cool new mobile features.”  Kara Swisher wonders if the news will involve FaceTime-like video calling. [UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: She said sources said the event wouldn't involve such news, but said it should.] I lean very slightly towards thinking it won’t, for one non-definitive reason: Every event I’ve been to at Google SF has been in a smallish event with a smallish number of media representatives. (In fact, the invite for this one calls it “a small press gathering.”) Video calling sounds like a big deal that would merit a major unveiling at the Googleplex in Mountain View.

Whatever happens, I’ll be there–and I’ll blog the news it happens. Join me at http://technologizer.com/googlemobile for live Technologizer coverage of the event, won’t you?

Why Can’t US Dell Streak Buyers Pay Like UK Dell Streak Buyers?

If you live in the UK and are willing to sign a two-year contract for a data plan that costs 35 pounds a month–that’s about $55 to us yanks–you can get Dell’s Streak superphone/tiny tablet for free. (The wireless carrier is O2, which seems to specialize in free phones: It’ll even give you an iPhone if you commit to a pricey enough plan.)

Assuming the Streak appeals to you, it’s a tempting offer; I first heard about it a few weeks ago, when I asked a Dell representative what the device might cost in the US. He mentioned the UK deal and said that the Streak was a hit.

Dell finally announced stateside availability and pricing for the Streak today. It’ll go on sale on Thursday. AT&T is the carrier. And if you sign up for a two-year contract, you’ll pay $299.99. Sans contract, the Streak will be $549.99.

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You Mean Gmail Helps You Nuke Duplicate Contacts?

Louis Gray has the scoop on Google’s revamped version of the Contacts section of Gmail. I’m most excited about an existing feature Louis mentions which I somehow didn’t know about: a tool for merging duplicate contacts: Both my personal and business Gmail accounts are overrun by dupes, in part because syncing Gmail contacts with other address books usually seems to create phantom records.

The merge feature isn’t perfect. It doesn’t weed out every dupe–even after I ran it, I was left with two records for guys named “Harry McCracken”–and you might be left with records which include both current e-mail addresses and obsolete ones. But it’s still way more fast and pleasant than wading through hundreds of contacts and pruning out duplicates yourself. And for me, it’s a reminder that any software feature you don’t know about is a new feature…