Matt Sharp asked:


It’s not enough for smartphones to be full of features these days; you have to be able to add extra software onto them for extra ‘phone coolness’. Let’s take a look at the world of mobile app stores, and see how they’re changing the way we think about phones.

HTC Magic – Open Source with Android

Let’s start this rundown of mobile app stores with one that’s already out there in the wild, on a phone that’s due to land very soon. We’re talking Google Android, with their Android Marketplace, and the phone is the HTC Magic.

The HTC Magic will potentially have the widest range of software available for you to add it, for the simple reason that Android, the Google OS that powers the HTC Magic, is completely open source. In other words, anyone has access to the source code, and can tailor it to fit their software needs. That’s going to lead to a massive breadth of software for the HTC Magic, some notable examples of which are a barcode scanner, to let you scan products, and find them near to where you are; and a real world info service, that uses imaging from the camera and GPS to put up real time info on the screen of the HTC Magic, about whatever you’re pointing the cam at. Not, that’s clever!

Toshiba TG01 – making Windows even easier to customise

Next, we move on to an operating system that you’ve been able to download extra software for, for YEARS: Windows Mobile. However this year, Windows Mobile (showcased best in the stunning Toshiba TG01) will be getting its own dedicated app store, run by Microsoft themselves. In fairness, this will probably not be vastly different to the range of software download stores already out there, but crucially, you’ll be able to download software directly onto your Toshiba TG01, which is a new touch on the old formula.

The Toshiba TG01 is going to be one of the best phones for running third party software, too, as it has both the fastest processor and biggest screen of any mobile phones on sale. So, if you’re after the power of Windows Mobile, and extra software that will run like a dream, the Toshiba TG01 is the phone for you.

Palm Pre – the easiest phone ever to make software for?

Finally, we come to a brand new phone, with a brand new operating system: the much-anticipated Palm Pre, which shows a different approach again to third-party software. Where the HTC Magic goes for open source and a vast breadth of software, and where the Toshiba TG01 goes for sheer power combined with Windows Mobile, the Palm Pre aims to have two factors above all else: intuitive handling, and incredible, tight integration between different apps on the phone. Take, for example, a Palm Pre app that looks up movie showtimes: it can find out, using your phone’s GPS, where your nearest cinema is, book tickets online for you, and then instantly put a note in your calendar to say you’re busy going to the cinema. Add to that the simple fact that the Palm Pre is probably the easiest smartphone to create software for (using simple web techniques like html code), and you can only come to one conclusion: the Palm Pre may well be the best ‘downloadable app’ phone of them all!