Google will buy Motorola’s former phone making division, Motorola Mobility, for $12.5 billion in cash, marking the search engine giant’s largest acquisition to date.

“Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies,” said Google CEO Larry Page in a statement. “Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers.”

Google Android competes directly with iPhone, Blackberry, and Microsoft Windows-based devices. Mobility makes smartphones for the Android, but sales have floundered, especially against the iPhone/iPad.

Motorola Mobility split from the rest of the company in January.

In the sale, Google will pay $40.00 per share, 63 percent over Motorola’s closing stock price on Friday.

The Associated Press reported that Google is likely interested in Motorola’s many, many patents on mobile phone technology, as a consortium of its competitors, which included Microsoft, Apple and Blackberry maker Research In Motion, recently won the chance to buy thousands of patents from bankrupt Canadian networking gear maker Novell.

Today, it’s good to be an Android user.

Plants VS Zombies, the critically acclaimed and ultra addicting strategy game from PopCap games is finally available for download on Android devices — oh, and it’s free for today only.

Just download the free Amazon Android App Store, and click on the Plants VS Zombies icon to get your free download. Free!

Google has announced that it will begin to start rolling out the new Google Talk video chat on Android devices.

If you have an Android phone or device you will be able to video or voice chat with anyone who has compatible devices such as an Android tablet or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer. This will work over and 3G or 4G data network or over Wi-Fi.

The way this will work is in your Google Talk friends list, a video or voice chat button will appear next your contacts and all you have to do is touch the button and you will be able to connect with them.

If say you needed to check something while you were chatting, the video pauses automatically so that way you can go back to the phone’s home screen or even another app.

The feature will be added to the Nexus S devices in the next few weeks and will be eventually be added to other Android 2.3+ devices.

So here is a list, in no particular order, of five applications/widgets available for free on the Andriod Market that everyone should have downloaded (if they don’t already) on their android smartphone. If there are other applications that you feel are vital to the operation of your android smartphone, please feel free to comment below and just maybe you’ll make someone very happy for providing them an application treasure trove.

1. Widgetsoid (2.x)

This app lets the user create customizable widgets that looks like the “Power Control” widget that the android phone already has. What is particularly awesome about this app is that you can change the color schemes, use any of your apps, settings, and other tools as buttons (against Power Control’s GPS, WiFi, BT, Sync, Brightness buttons only and without any customizations). This widget creator allows users to modify the buttons to control silence/vibrate/ring, or use the phone’s flash as a flashlight on command, or the amount of RAM your phone is using, or even a battery widget that takes you directly to your phone’s battery usage. This widget simply has it all and is a great starting point to customizing your smartphone with a sleek and organized design.

2. Fancy Widget

This widget, when placed on your home screen, displays a digital clock, the date, battery percentage, and most importantly the weather (with a temperature gauge, his and lows of the day, and a weather icon) in a “fancy” looking interface. You can tap the time to bring up the customizable settings or you can tap the weather icon that will immediately bring up a screen that forecasts the next three days, gives you sunrise and sunset times for the current date, and even humidity and wind calculations for the current date. You can even change the color combinations and the location of all the information displayed. Essentially, this widget not only looks cool on your phone, but is also a productive tool to keep you informed of the weather situation in your locale.

3. PdaNet

As my absolute favorite app, PdaNet allows the user to tether their phone to a computer, laptop, tablet, etc. and use the phone’s 3G/4G service to browse the internet on the computer. Although the critics may say, “but most android smartphones already have USB enabled tethering”, this app also pops up incoming text messages on your laptop that allows the user to directly answer from their computer rather than picking up the phone to respond. The only thing with this app is that you must go on PdaNet’s website and download the software for the computer you plan to tether to. This app is particularly useful when you want to peruse your favorite websites (like Blast!) on trains and other public transit systems or anywhere else you can imagine that doesn’t supply free and secure WiFi. Once that’s done, all you have to worry about is going over your service provider’s data plan.

4. Handcent SMS

There are a lot of messaging service applications out there, but I like Handcent the best for its reliability and customizability. This app lets the user completely customize their text message interface, from icons to fonts, to LED color notifications on the front of most android phones. If you are like every other person who has went through high school with text messaging, then you’ll want an app that allows you to pick color schemes, backgrounds, appearance settings and so on. If you haven’t tried this app yet, give it a whirl and maybe you’ll experience some more pleasure in text messaging.

5. Lookout Mobile Security

This app offers spyware and malware protection, backup to their website (after creating an account on the website) and it offers a missing device service. If you lose your phone in between the cushions or leave it behind, you can go on that same website where your backup rests and make your phone ring, even if it’s on silent, so that you can find it in no time. If you regularly keep your GPS enabled, you can also get a GPS location on your device through the website. If someone has the sleight of hand to steal your phone, then this app may bring you back to your long lost android smartphone and catch a thief in the process. What an app.

Honorable Mention: Launcher Pro

This last one replaces the standard android home screen functions and replaces it with a similar, but customizable user interface. Launcher Pro also has a variety of new icons, a bottom app bar, color customizations, backup, and a customizable app drawer. This app may offer a smoother experience for some users in comparison to some of the others (like Dolphin Browser or even the stock android Launcher), but as these smartphones become more power (Dual-Core, Snapdragon processors), the less smoothness will be noticeable between the different platforms.

The location-based app, Poynt for iPhone now has a new category of search that’s already been available for the BlackBerry and Android versions: gas prices. Now when you use this nifty little app for the iPhone, you can sort gas price results by price or proximity, and launch right into Maps for turn-by-turn directions. Additionally, there’s a few new features, such as being reminded of movie times or dinner reservations, and you can now add theaters to your favorites for quick access later on.

Download Poynt for your iPhone (for free!) after the jump!

The next stage for Guitar Hero to dominate is the little one, in the palm of your hand, via your Blackberry or Android-enabled device.

Today, Hands-On Mobile Inc., a cell-phone game developer, released the popular music-game on the world’s most popular smartphones, Android and Blackberry.

In the palm of your hands!

Guitar Hero: World Tour Mobile: Backstage Pass, the official name of the game, will run you $4.49 and comes with 15 songs to play and more made available each month.

"The Guitar Hero sensation is one that crosses all platforms with mass market appeal spanning generations and geography," said Lynn Monica, VP & GM of Mobile Games, Hands-On Mobile. "Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile: Backstage Pass has gameplay for everyone and will surely satisfy any mobile gaming fan from beginner to expert."

With Google/Android recently surpassing Apple/iPhone, it’ll be interesting to see if developer’s attention soon shifts more dominantly to the Android Marketplace over the App Store. Fight!

Before I get into the meat of my review, let me preface it by telling you that I’m a card carrying Apple ballwasher of the highest order.

Yes, I’m one of “those people” who turn their nose up at anything that’s a P.C., I look forward to Steve Jobs’ press conferences like they’re the Superbowl, and I will not budge on my stance that Apple’s iPhone is the greatest cellphone ever produced, and it will never be topped by any company no matter how hard they try.

Apparently, I was very, VERY wrong.

After about a week of use, I have no doubt in my mind that the HTC Incredible is the fastest, most user friendly cellphone I’ve ever gotten my mitts on, and, it destroys my iPhone 3G.

*Feels awful for betraying my beloved, but now slow as a snail iPhone*

The HTC Incredible is so lightning fast, thanks to its 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

This means that everything, from watching YouTube videos, to sending an email, to posting on Facebook, to downloading new apps, happens almost instantaneously. And that’s WITHOUT the use of WiFi. With it, the speed of this phone is absolutely mind boggling.

Also helping this phone’s speediness, and helping me to forget about using my iPhone, is it’s software. The Incredible uses the new HTC Sense UI, and its ease of use can’t be put into words. So instead, here are some of the highlights of this operating system that I think you should know about.

• There are SEVEN home screens. You can pinch the home screen to view “cards” of all the home screens at once. Flickr is included and can be synced with your album on the phone
• The keyboard is awesome (more on that in a bit)
• Flash lite is included with the browser
• Integrated Twitter app

In regards to the HTC Incredible’s browser, it works great and renders web pages very fast. As I noted above, you DO get Flash lite, but not the full version, so don’t be surprised when every flash page that you go to doesn’t work properly. That little annoyance aside, I loved how easy everything is to use. You can “pinch-zoom” pages in as far as you want, you get a nice screen shot of bookmarked pages, and they can all be viewed in landscape or vertical configurations.

If the HTC Incredible’s speed and ease of use isn’t enough to get you salivating (and it should be) its sleek looks and feel might be the thing to convince you to purchase one. This is the thinnest smart phone I’ve ever held, and its styling is fantastic. It’s slightly curved, and rubberized on the back, adding a “grippy” feel to the phone, which is great for a klutz like me, who’s constantly dropping everything I touch.

The Incredible’s 3.7 inch, 480×800 WVGA AMOLED touch screen is also pretty bad ass. It’s super bright, very responsive, and has the perfect amount of haptic feedback.

Because of the Incredible’s responsive screen and large size, the phone’s keyboard is much easier to use than my iPhone 3G’s. It’s way faster (again, see the theme here?) and I loved how the user can hold down a key to get the “shift” row. I also liked how the manufacturer fit a comma and return key in place of a dedicated “smiley face” button. Oh, and if that’s not all cool enough, the HTC Incredible also has built in voice input on any text field, and much to my surprise, it actually works and I wasn’t able to trip it up!

And now, let’s get to the HTC Incredible’s camera.

Sorry iPhone 3G.

You’re being left in the dust, yet again. The Incredible’s camera is 8 megapixel, and has two LED flashes. The photos I took were the sharpest I’ve ever seen taken by a smart phone, and bursting with color and contrast. They’re also incredibly (pun intended) easy to take, what with the phone’s track-pad button or by simply pressing the screen. Zooming in and out, turning off the flash, and making any kind of adjustment to your snapped photo (brightness, saturation, etc..) is also a cinch, as is sending out any photo via text or email.

Oh, wait. I almost forgot — it makes phone calls, too.

For the week I used the HTC Incredible, I was reminded just how much I missed Verizon’s service, and just how shitty AT&T’s really is. I didn’t once have any issues with dropped calls, or any annoying “Can you hear me? HELLO!??” moments, like I’m wont to do with my iPhone 3G.

OK, enough gushing about this phone, and let’s just get to the bottom line. The HTC Incredible beats hell out of any other smart phone available as of this very moment.

If you’re a Verizon customer, and you’re looking to upgrade, get this phone immediately. If you’re a Verizon customer, and you’ve been seething iPhone envy, same thing. Buy it now. You’ve finally got something that’ll make a devout Apple dork like myself rethink their purchase of the once mighty iPhone.

Let this be a lesson, Steve Jobs. You’d better knock my socks off with the iPhone 4G this summer, or else I’m buying me an Incredible.

In an effort to keep dedicated gamers as connected as humanly possible to their portable devices, GameFly today announced that it has released the “GameCenter” application for Palm and Android devices.

The App, which released last Fall, was only available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, but due to “requests by subscribers and fans,” it’s finally showed up on Android and Palm enabled gadgets.

Examine rental queues, check out trailers and browse game news with the App, or just stare at it, like the mole on that kid’s face who sits across from you in class. We don’t judge.

Google’s march toward world domination”"we mean, organizing the world’s information, took a huge step forward today as they announced their intentions to release an open-source Google operating system in late 2009 and provide it on netbooks in 2010. Such a Google OS would be very lightweight, and dedicate much its processing power towards web-based applications in Google Chrome, hence Google naming the operating system “Google Chrome OS.”

While it’s unexpected that such an announcement would come today, it actually makes sense in the grand scheme of things. When one looks at all the web applications Google offers”"Gmail, calendar, Google Docs, a desktop search”"organizing these programs into a tightly integrated package at a good price seems very logical. When one considering that Google’s price for just about everything is “free” it seems like an even better deal. It’s worth nothing that such a concept isn’t strictly original. In the recent past, Wal-mart sold a $199 computer that came with a Ubuntu distribution, gOS, which featured web applications heavily.

Google already has one operating system, but Android is a mobile platform, and Google says in its blog post that Chrome OS is a “is a new project, separate from Android.” Most applications written for Chrome OS would reside in the Chrome browser, making it exceptionally cross-platform. (This is, of course, assuming Chrome ever makes it to OS X. Our fingers are crossed.) Google also promises the OS will be lightweight so it can boot and get you to the web quickly where you can do your business.

Why should you care? Because now Google is going after Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else at the throat. No longer are Microsoft’s cash cows safe; with Google Docs rapidly becoming a viable web alternative to Office, Google Chrome OS could now start to threaten the Windows user base as well. Clearly the take over isn’t going to occur overnight. Depending on who’s counting, Google Chrome users make up about 2% of the browser share, while Firefox is at about 20% and IE remains king at around 60%.

But Android, which currently runs on only one phone offered by T-Mobile, has still managed to attract a huge number of application developers and amassed a sizable app library. Between Google’s solid web applications, these dedicated developers, the general drive to offload computing to the “cloud,” and Google’s bottomless pockets, this very well could develop into more than just a twinkle in Google’s eye.

While we would love to get our hands on an OS X version of Chrome alone, we’re even more excited by the prospect of running an entire Google OS on our computer. We’ll keep an eye out to the future for you.

Apple’s iPhone has been dominating the handheld market since its release last June, I’m sure you’ve heard.  Since then, it has been tough for other companies like Samsung to get people talking.

On November 5, the Open Handset Alliance was created.  This alliance, consisting of 34 hardware, software and telecommunications companies was founded with the collective goal of furthering the standards of mobile technologies.

A few years ago Google acquired Android Inc. and from there they’ve been building a product that is now just a few weeks away from reality.

“Google’s Android platform will launch in the next several weeks. It will be an HTC phone, likely the HTC Dream, and will be launched internationally on the T-Mobile network. A window of between Oct 15 and Nov 30,” says www.veturebeat.com.

According to ZDNet, September 15 is the release date of the phone at $150, which will be, “available to existing T-mobile users,” on that day. A more expensive version of the phone, at $399, will be available sometime in October.

For those of you who don’t know, Android is a program based off of the Linux OS which has the potential to increase the ease of web based applications on the go.  Likewise, this program is free and Google has been offering the tools to create programs for this system for a while now.  At launch, it’s got the potential to knock the iPhone out of your hand due to the ease of development and reliability of its software.

At this time there are no actual specs; nor are there any pictures of a potential model for this, “Gphone,” but considering the proximity of its actual release, they’re bound to come up in the next couple weeks.