The company claims the Modu T will be coming to market soon, but have supplied no details where and when. We first covered the Modu phone system earlier this year when ASUS was reported to be working on a netbook that used a Modu phone for connectivity. That netbook has not come to market yet.

The Modu T phone is based on the BREW platform, and has a touch screen and 3G connectivity. It’s a fully functioning phone on its own, but requires one of the jackets to gain many of the functions associated with smartphones of today. The company is reported to be working on an Android version of the Modu phone for release in the future.

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Though Nokia currently has a small presence in the U.S., the Ovi Store does business in 190 countries. The company may be poised to enter the U.S. market in a big way, so it will soon be even bigger. Nokia customers are already downloading more apps daily than Research in Motion’s BlackBerry customers.

The Ovi ecosystem is not just apps, with Ovi Maps, Ovi Chat, Ovi Mail and Ovi Music. Ovi Music has 11 million tracks up for sale globally, and Nokia claims it has 17 million active Chat and Mail accounts. Ovi Maps now provides navigation service in 78 countries.

Having such an international presence helps all the Ovi businesses — especially the app store. In a recent interview with Nokia, the company claimed that developers reap 18 to 22 percent increased sales when apps are available in localized languages. Nokia is in a better position than most companies to take advantage of this phenomenon.

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Given that the original G1 was made by HTC, which now makes some of the best Android handsets around, it’s a safe bet that the G2 is another HTC device. If that’s true, we can glean quite a bit of information. HTC has turned to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon CPU to power high-end Android phones, so an HTC-made G2 would probably offer the same. Although Qualcomm has dual core, faster processors coming down the pike, it’s either too early for a faster chip in the G2, or the phone gets a faster processor and doesn’t launch until year-end. My gut says the phone arrives in the next month or so and comes with the now-standard 1 GHz Snapdragon chip.

Support for T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network tells us about the phone capabilities as well. Speedy mobile broadband is great for all activities, but it provides the most bang for buck with large files, such as those used to transport media. Based on my hands-on testing of an HSPA+ data stick, I’m expecting real world download speeds on the G2 to approach 10 Mbps in a best-case scenario. That’s ideal for both streaming video and pulling down media files, but what’s the point of such an advantage if the consumption device is limited to a small screen? The G2 ought to offer a screen size of at least  four inches in diagonal for media consumption over the HSPA+ network. Another reason for a large display is the competition. Based on support for a faster mobile broadband network, T-Mobile’s G2 will be going head to head with Sprint’s 4G handsets: the EVO (see our review here) and the Epic, both of which offer displays of  four inches or better.

HSPA+ isn’t all about the downloads though; it provides reasonably fast upload speeds as well. Activities like sending email, updating social networks or basic web surfing work just fine on today’s 3G networks, so what does HSPA+ bring to the table when it comes to uploads? Again, there’s a big benefit when it comes to media, only this time it’s for media creating and sharing. A faster upload pipe will make it easier for G2 owners to shoot larger video files up to the cloud or live-stream as needed. For that reason, it won’t surprise me to see high-definition, 720p video recording on the G2, which again is becoming common on higher-end smartphones today. A front-facing video camera isn’t beyond the realm of possibilities either, because video chat is another benefactor of a faster wireless network.

T-Mobile might be playing coy with the G2 details, but by touting the phone as the first handset with HSPA+ support, the handset’s capabilities offer some reasonable expectations. Once the phone specifications become official, we’ll see how close — or how off-base — my educated guesses are.

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Spice optimized all the Twitter functions for easy use on Symbian phones. Users can do everything on Twitter with ease, including updating timelines, tracking tags, marking favorites and tweeting. For those on the Nokia platform, it’s probably worth giving Trill a try considering it’s free.

There are a few other Twitter apps for Symbian which are worth checking out, too. Twim is a lightweight Java-based app that will work on most phones. Those looking for a fuller Twitter experience can check out Twibble. The interface is customizable and users can do most everything in Twitter with Twibble. Both of these apps are free for non-commercial use.

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Twitter is still a popular social network for the Apple and Android crowds according to the new numbers. The official Twitter app was recently released for both the iPhone and the Android platforms, and quickly moved up the chart of the most popular free apps. It has already captured the number 10 spot on the iPhone free app list and number 6 on the Android chart.

Amazon only recently released an Android version of its Kindle reader app, but it has been out for the iPad since that device’s launch date. Apple has its own iBooks reader app on the iPad, and the numbers indicate it is kicking Amazon’s Kindle app to the curb with iBooks. Both reader apps are on the ten most popular apps list, but iBooks is in the top position and the Kindle app has the bottom spot. That disparity is somewhat surprising given how long the Amazon Kindle market has been in business compared to Apple’s new iBookstore. Most likely it reflects how hard Apple is pushing iPad owners to install the iBooks app.

Distimo’s look at the top 100 grossing applications on each platform points to the money-making opportunities the Apple App Store provides to developers. The average app price for both the iPhone and iPad top grossing apps was almost double that of the other phone platforms. The top 100 grossing apps on the iPhone were higher priced than those on the iPad; they averaged a smooth 36 percent higher average price than the top grossing iPad apps. Of course the iPhone apps have a bigger head start than the iPad apps, given how short a time the iPad has been on the market.

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The new store is available in 33 countries, but there are a few missing. It is not accessible from the U.S. or Canada, at least it won’t let me in as it only lists two countries in the Americas — Brazil and Mexico.

The user of the new Kobo app can access the online bookshelf, and download books to the device. The online bookshelf is synced with each device the user has, keeping the library updated at all times. Buy a book at the online store, and it’s waiting on the device the next time the app is run. Bookmarks are synced across all Kobo devices in similar fashion as on the Kindle and Nook, so it’s possible to read a book on multiple devices and always be at the last position.

Kobo for Android is free and is available in the Android Market. Kobo is now available on more platforms than any other reader, making them a force to reckoned with in the e-book sector.

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No matter what the public reaction will be to the Droid X, it will be huge. That’s in reference to the size of the phone, which is probably the biggest phone produced by anyone. Motorola is putting a 4.3-inch display on the Droid X, the same size as the big Sprint HTC EVO 4G. The EVO is already pushing the limits of how big a phone can be and still be comfortable in the hand but the Droid X is even larger, based on a comparison photo of the two Android phones.

The announcement of the Droid X by Verizon and Motorola will be June 23, with the actual release a few weeks later. In addition to the large screen, the Droid X will have 720p video recording and the next generation of the Motoblur social networking software from Motorola.

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Watch this video for free on GigaOM

Swype is an alternative keyboard for the Android platform that with just a little practice can be the fastest keyboard on the small screen. Text is entered with Swype by “spelling” words by swiping the letters on the keyboard. Swype tracks the movement and determines with eery accuracy the correct word.

In this video demonstration I show a small amount of text being entered with Swype on the HTC EVO 4G. To provide an unobstructed view of the process, I was standing behind and over the camera with the EVO sitting on the table in front of me. The text entry was still accurate and fast, but is even better when used in a normal position holding the phone.

Swype has only been available to very few due to a closed beta, but the company is making it available freely for a few days. Vist the Swype beta web site and get it. You won’t regret it.

As to the HTC EVO 4G was, which was released less than two weeks ago, the numbers show it’s almost caught up with Google’s own Nexus One. The N1 represents 2 percent of the Android phone usage, and the EVO is already up to 1.93 percent. This demonstrates both how popular the EVO has been with consumers — the phone sold out on launch day — and the degree to which Sprint has been promoting it. The Motorola Droid is outpacing all other Android handsets by a margin of 3 to 1, and that’s impressive.

It’s important to remember that numbers like these should be taken with the caveat that they only represent one company’s statistics that were captured on their own network. These belong to the Chitika ad network, which does those little link ads on many websites that pop up an ad when you click them. The folks at Chitika indicate these numbers are the result of nearly a million ad impressions collected over the first two weeks in June, so there must be some merit in them.

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The rest of the XPERIA line — X10, X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro — will all be getting upgraded to Android 2.1 later this year. Version 2.1 is not the latest version of Android that adds notable features to the platform (2.2), but it is a big step up from the version currently shipping on the XPERIA phones. This update will also add HD video recording capabilities to the line for the XPERIA phones that support it.

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• ravenme: “My life is exactly like the iPhone 4 pre-order process right now. Too many requests and I am overloaded and unable to respond.”
• alexlindsay: “Instead of crashing out, Apple’s new store app should just say-AT&Ts lame servers simply can’t handle demand for the new iphone!”
• dmoren: “Look, everybody be fair. It’s not like AT&T’s ever dealt with an iPhone launch bef—whoops.”
• CaliLewis: “This iPhone 4 pre order process failure feels awfully familiar. Good thing we’re not all stuck in the store this time, though.”

It really amazes me that AT&T — and even Apple, for that matter — is unable to handle the load of pre-orders. This is the fourth iPhone model in as many years that AT&T has offered the device and it’s the fourth year in a row that servers are buckling under the data load — something that is a core business for the carrier. In fairness, Apple’s store is also kicking back messages saying that orders can’t currently be processed.

Like I said, I’m not pre-ordering, but I’m sure many of you are. How is the experience going for you?