Google’s Nexus One sales have been fairly flat since the Android phone was launched earlier this year, but things may change with Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s decision to reduce its early termination fee. The Nexus One maker has been getting some bad press surrounding the Nexus One’s $350 early return fee – something Google calls their “equipment recovery fee” – and has even drawn an official inquiry by the FCC. It’s not clear why, exactly, but Google has announced that it has dropped the fee for returning a Nexus One down to $150.

Still, the drop in fees doesn’t make the Nexus One a cheap smartphone to return. Google’s new $150 “equipment recovery fee” rides on top of T-Mobile (NYSE: DT)’s $200 ETF fee, so it’s still going to cost you a pretty penny to give the N1 back to Google. If you return the phone within 14 days of purchase, you’re free and clear of the penalty. But, should you return the phone after 14 days, you’ll be stuck paying Google’s fee in addition to T-Mobile’s ETF.

Check out Google’s new Nexus One terms of sale here.

In addition to the GT350 model, LG has also announced another device – the GD880 aka LG Mini. It’s a slim all-touchscreen phone with “textured metal accents on the sides” and an elegant button-free face.

Feature wise, the Mini boasts:

• 3.2-inch 16:9 edge-to-edge display
• 5-megapixel camera with face detection
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
• WiFi, Bluetooth, A-GPS, FM Radio
• Media player, email client, web browser
• Special apps for social networking (Facebook and Twitter): Social Network Connect, Social Network Feed and Social Address Book

The LG Mini will be available in Europe starting in March, followed by other markets. Prices will vary country-to-country…

Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) announced their WiLink 7.0 chip today, less than a week before Mobile World Congress starts, and it’s rather impressive for what it does. It’s the first chip that can receive FM radio, transmit FM radio, has WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, and Bluetooth 3.0. It will also support WiFi Direct once that becomes a standard, but we’ll have to wait and see if that technology is going to take off since Bluetooth 3.0 pretty much does the exact same thing. TI claim it’s 50% smaller than “today’s existing solutions” and that it will cost 30% less too thanks to being built on 65 nanometer technology.

The image above is from a video TI made about the WiLink 7.0. They’ve uploaded it to this page which also has more information about the chip itself should you be interested in reading about it further. TI did confirm that the WiLink 7 is currently being sampled by various customers and should be in devices hitting the market by the end of this year.

[Via: Press Release; hat tip to Gizmodo]

LG has announced the successor to its low-end messaging phone – KS360, which we also know as Tribe or Neon. The new device keeps the side-sliding QWERTY form factor, while priding itself with social networking features, that include integration with Facebook and Twitter.

In addition, there’s a 3-inch WQVGA touchscreen (there were no touchscreen on the KS360) as well as four-line QWERTY keypad (versus KS360’s three lines) with dedicated buttons for accessing push e-mail, the web browser and instant messaging client.

Availability wise, the LG GT350 ill go on sale in Europe from this April and will then launch in other markets around the world. It will come in four color combinations including Aqua Blue, Purple, Light Silver, and Black, some of which will be exclusive to specific carriers.

The Mobile Data Association (MDA) has made public a summary of its latest report on the texting habits of the UK population – saying we like messaging is a bit like saying ‘a fish is keen on water’, but perhaps we didn’t recognize the scale of it before (no pun intended)!

The continued growth of messaging is highlighted by a 2009 daily average of 265 million text messages and 1.6 million picture messages.  2009’s text message total was 96.8 billion, while over 600 million picture messages were sent across the whole year.

Seasonal drivers still appear to propel the use of Picture Messaging, with 4.5 million picture messages being sent on Christmas Day itself, while Network Operators’ figures also indicated an upturn in picture messaging during the recent cold snap.

Assessing the findings of the MDA’s report, Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst at Quocirca, said: “New generation touchscreen handsets and the bundling of SMS messages into many tariffs has made texting easier, and seen its role develop.  Now it is not only a convenient medium for a quick chat with friends, but also a way of participating in television voting and raising funds for needy charities.  When a powerful call to action is given, the population of the UK often turn first towards their mobile phones.”

Steve Reynolds, MDA Chairman, said: “These statistics show that even with new social media forms of messaging such as Twitter and Facebook, people are using SMS as a social messaging tool because of its simplicity and ubiquity. There remains a significant and still developing role for text messaging.  In a seemingly relentless tide of status updates, tweets and pokes, the UK population’s love affair with  mobile messaging for instant, on-the-go communication continues to deepen.”

In case you love the detail, here are the Q4 2009 Statistical findings

Text Messaging (SMS)

Total number of text messages (SMS) sent in:

• 2009 total 96.8 billion
• 2008 total 78.9 billion
• 2007 total 56.9 billion

These SMS statistics can be broken down as follows in 2009:

• Year on year growth (2009 vs 2008): 23% growth
• Number of text messages sent per day: 265 million

Video and Picture messages (MMS)

Total number of picture messages (MMS) sent in:

• 2009 total 601 million
• 2008 total 553 million
• 2007 total 449 million

These statistics can be broken down as follows in 2009:

• Year on year growth (2009 vs 2008): 9% growth
• Number of MMS messages sent per day: 1.6 million

I think we all need a sit down with a nice cold drink after that veritable stat attack

ELLEuk.com is launching its first iPhone application, giving FREE access to ELLE’s hugely popular Horoscope content. You can receive on-the-go daily, monthly and yearly astrological updates straight to your phone, provided by ELLE’s resident astrologers, The Saturn Sisters, who apparently have attracted a large and loyal following with daily visitors to the ELLEuk.com site – so much so, that 380,000 monthly horoscopes are read on ELLEuk.com!

Highlights are:

• App to be updated daily
• Completely free to download
• Direct link from app to ELLEuk.com and from ELLEuk.com to app store
• App to include ‘e mail to friend’ link

Marcy Richardson, Digital Brand Manager of ELLEuk.com said: “While fashion and beauty is ELLEuk.com’s core content, our premium horoscope channel is extremely popular and has established a cult online following. We’re delighted to be able to engage with our readers in an exciting new way by offering them an insight into their star sign at any time they choose from their iPhone. The application will also enable iPhone customers to email horoscopes to their friends if they see something that is particularly timely!”

The new Horoscopes iPhone application is available for users to download FREE from the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) Store on iTunes now!

Elleuk.com Astrology / £free [iTunes link]

As the iPhone becomes part of more and more professionals’ lives, and the soon to be available iPad being considered as an enterprise device, productivity apps are certain to become even more sought out by users of these devices. That’s why it’s good to bear that Roe Mobile Development has just released version 2.0 of its iPhone productivity app: “Smart Recorder 2.0”. Smart Recorder is an audio recorder app that offers features beyond those included in the iPhone Voice Recorder and other audio recorder apps.

Some unique features of Smart Recorder include:

• Ability to select a compression rate of the recorded file that is optimized for email. For example, a 1 hour recording can be as large as 30 MB. With Smart Recorder, the file can be compressed for email to as little at 6 MB.
• Ability to add time-based tags within a recording that enable the listener to advance to important tagged portions of the session.
• In app access to the iPhone camera from within Smart Recorder which enables photographs of whiteboards, lecture visuals, or anything else to be taken and associated with a recording session. When a session is sent via email, the photograph is included with the audio file.
• Playback at normal, slow, and faster speeds to listen carefully to a recording or skim through when searching for a segment.
• File transfer capability via WiFi to a web site, synchronized with a computer using the SyncDocs app, uploaded to the cloud file storage service Box.net, or emailed, all directly through the application.
• Extensive help files and user definable settings allow customization of Smart Recorder to suit the user’s needs.

Smart Recorder 2.0 is available in the iTunes App Store in a Lite version for free and can be upgraded to a full version.

Smart Recorder 2.0 / £1.79 [iTunes link]

If you’re thinking about updating your iPhone to the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware, you might want to note that the update will essentially stop you from unlocking your iPhone for use on GSM networks that aren’t your official iPhone carrier. The iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware comes bundled with a new baseband firmware version (05.12.01) that makes it impossible to unlock the iPhone to use on, say, the T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) USA network. We’re telling you this because we’re a bit surprised by new stats from Medialets that indicates that 14% of iPhone users have updated their iPhones to the new iPhone OS 3.1.3 since last week.

The baseband modem is the piece of technology that allows your iPhone to communicate with wireless networks like AT&T (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile. It’s this baseband modem’s firmware that controls whether or not you’re allowed to surf multiple GSM networks, or just the one that sold you your iPhone. The thing is, there are hacks out there that will unlock almost all versions of the baseband, but none of them work on this latest version. Even the latest iPhone hacking utility, PwnageTool, won’t be able to hack this new baseband to work with unlocking utilities like blacksn0w or ultrasn0w.

Medialets also mentions that 87% of those that updated to iPhone OS 3.1.3 came from the previous iPhone OS 3.1.2 firmware. The only real benefits of the new iPhone OS are it’s less buggy batter meter and better support for third-party apps that were reportedly crashing with 3.1.2. Considering that most people probably don’t need the iPhone OS 3.1.3, we thought it was only right that we let you know what you’re losing by updating your iPhone.

In the end, if you don’t travel or could care less about using your iPhone on other GSM networks, just ignore this post. This concludes our Public Service Announcement. You’ll now be returned to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Via: Medialets]

Republic of Fun just announced the release of Slug Wars – a real-time strategy game that brings to light the epic battles fought by brave slugs in yards across the nation!

Slug Wars is all about managing unit queues for maximum impact on the battlefield. Slug units move down one of three lanes to reach the enemy base, engaging enemies along the way. Players carefully utilize eight different types of combat slugs, ranging from slow-moving (even for a slug!) tanks to salt-shaker-wielding kamikazes to defend their base from the slug onslaught while trying to capture their enemy’s base. Effectively selecting the order to release slug units is the key to success in this surprisingly deep, yet easy to play strategy game.

“Slug Wars was a combination of inspiration from one of our favorite classic game series, Worms, as well as a whole new gameplay type, and tons of fantastic input from our fans and the gaming community,” said Mike Rasmussen, el presidente of Republic of Fun. “We wanted to bring humor and fun to a deep and engaging game, and our fans really helped us determine what features they wanted to see in a mobile strategy game.”

Slug Wars is now available in the App Store for $1.99 normally, but is ending today on a $0.99 sale streak – so grab it quick!

Slug Wars / $0.99 (sale) [iTunes link]

There are a real mixture of Apps for the iPhone – some useful, some more for fun – I can’t decide which category ‘Slango Urban Dictionary’ falls into, but it certainly brings a smile to my face

Here’s the spiel:

Ever wanted to know what your favorite rappers were talking about when they referenced their “whip” or their “chrome four-fifth”? Ever wanted to know what all the cool kids were saying? Wonder no more with Slango!

Slango is the best Urban Dictionary app in the App Store. With access to over 4,000,000 words and features suchch as Word of the Day, Search, Share, and Bookmarks with offline-viewing support, it’s a no-brainer. Try Slango!

Well I have to say I gave it a go, and it’s very amusing – there’s a wide variety of phrases in there, and some I’d not heard before – but will certainly be going in my ’street lingo’ repository! I’d say if you’re bored and fancy a chuckle, which you can share with others, give it a go!

Slango Urban Dictionary / £0.59 [iTunes link]