The Mobile Fun Blog

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

One of Microsoft’s major justifications for the Yahoo search deal is scale. CEO Steve Ballmer has repeatedly asserted that greater scale would allow Microsoft to improve search accuracy. Just last week he told Search Marketing Expo West attendees: “The ability to put together Yahoo’s volumes and Microsoft’s volumes and use that in a way that improves the experience more, let’s call it all involved parties, we think is absolutely fantastic.”

Today Samsung and U.S. Cellular announced a new device for the carrier, the Freeform. A sleek, candy-bar shaped, texting machine that’s quite easy on the eyes.

The slim design makes it very pocketable, while still maintaining a decent sized full QWERTY keyboard. The specs of the device are dismal, but it shouldn’t be an issue, as the device is mainly for messaging. While I’ve always been partial to a row of numbers atop of a keyboard, this one makes do without one just fine. The keys have some good space in between each other making the heaviest of texters happy.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In the early 2000s, Web browsers were considered by software architects to be launching platforms for other types of program interpreters, such as Java and .NET. The HTML in the Web page simply got the code going, and the network of pages a business would use to launch Web apps was considered the “intranet.” But as browsers have matured (rapidly in recent months), they have become the interpreter for Web applications — not a launching point for Java, but a proving ground for a highly evolved JavaScript.

Sprint (NYSE: S) may not yet have a truly nationwide WiMAX network up and running in the US, but they’re making preparations to launch the first WiMAX phone in the US this year. Sprint has confirmed to Forbes that the No. 4 3 US wireless carrier will drop some sort of WiMAX phone on the American people in the first half of this year, and not by year’s end, as has been previously stated by WiMAX provider Clear. The phone is most likely going to be an HTC smartphone, making the incredibly feature-packed HTC Supersonic Android phone.

More from T3.com – they’ve been busy on the exclusive front, and have been able to extract some info from the Operators Group Sales Manager at Sagem (who make the phone for Puma). Word is, there are more Puma phones coming:

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

Like many nighthawks across the continent, I found myself glued to more than one screen…all right, three. Plus my BlackBerry…as I watched this morning’s launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. I observed the spectacle with a curious mixture of excitement and sadness because after the current STS-130 mission, the shuttle program has only four more scheduled flights before it’s grounded for good.

EA Mobile released its next installment in the Spore franchise, Spore Creatures, last week for the iPhone / iPod Touch.  To help celebrate its launch, EA Mobile has given us a code to giveaway to one of our lucky readers.

We first got a look at the game at CES in Las Vegas and we were certainly impressed.  You’re able to customize your Spore creature in many ways and tilting the iPhone to navigate your creature through the game world would ensure pretty much anyone can play the game.

The Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPad was making waves throughout the tech community way before Steve Jobs took to the stage to officially announce Apple’s tablet device, but it seems Apple may not have taken too lightly to McGraw-Hill CEO Harold McGraw III’s confirmation of Apple’s plans the night before the iPad was to be revealed. VentureBeat is reporting that McGraw’s loose lips may have gotten his company removed from one of the iPad presentation slides depicting all of Apple’s publishing partners for the iPad. The slide that was shown during the announcement yesterday showed five publishers rather than the six that would have included McGraw-Hill (see the slide to the left).

Truphone has announced a strategic MVNO partnership with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) UK. The agreement will give Truphone access to Vodafone UK’s network to deliver voice and data services to its Truphone Local Anywhere customers.

The partnership is apparently the first in a series of building blocks for the launch of Truphone Local Anywhere, a global SIM-based mobile service, from Truphone that allows users to make and receive calls via a local number and at a local price, in any Truphone country. The service will also offer number portability, so customers will be able to transfer existing mobile numbers across to the Truphone Local Anywhere service.