Google’s Android might have sold many more units than Apple’s iOS but according to Google’s own Suzanne Michel, 2/3rd of search giants mobile search requests comes from Apple’s iOS devices including iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. When compared to  overall mobile searches received by world’s largest search engine Google, 2/3rd is a huge number. Something Android could not out do even with its immense growth.

Worth mentioning here is that millions of devices from other platforms are also in that 1/3rd area alongside Android devices. This information was revealed by Suzanne Michel, who is an Google employee during Senate Judiciary hearings today when she was under oath.

[9to5Mac]

One of the many things missing from iOS today is the ability to change themes. However if you are jailbroken, you can try and apply hundreds of awesome themes available in the Cydia Store for your downloading pleasure. One of my favorite themes available in Cydia is called ‘Galaxy S II theme’. This theme is based on Samsung’s Galaxy S II’s Android user-interface and looks pretty solid even on an iOS device (you know Samsung’s Galaxy Line up and Apple iDevices are pretty similar after all).

Available in Cydia Store for $2, Galaxy S II visually transforms your jailbroken iOS device’s homescreen into an Android device’s homescreen. You can customize the placement of icons, have widgets on your home screen and do whatever you want. This theme also features its own custom wallpapers that you can easily apply using the built-in wallpaper settings page.

Galaxy S II theme for iOS devices is available in Cydia Store for $2 under MacCiti repo. It can also be downloaded from the DreamBoard theme store for iOS.

 Here’s the full gallery of Galaxy S II images

Samsung has recently announced its cross-platform free messaging service called ChatON. The service will be showcased at IFA this year and will bring separate apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and others. The service that will be available in 120 countries and in 62 languages will allow iOS users to text, share pictures and videos, and much more with other iOS users, as well as Android, and Blackberry users. Samsung also plans to launch a web client for this service so that PC users can also take advantage of it.

Apart from one-on-one chatting, users will be able to group chat with their friends using ChatON service. Group messaging is also supported by ChatON.

ChatON is a similar service to Apple’s iMessage that will become available in the fall. Samsung’s ChatON service obviously has advantage over iMessage because it is a cross platform service and will cover more of your contacts then iMessage. iMessage currently supports iOS devices running iOS 5.

You can see ChatON by Samsung in action in the video embedded below. We will let you know as soon as this service goes live for iOS users.

[SammyHub]

You know Facebook isn’t good at hiding secrets in the codes of their apps, they recently leaked their dedicated iPad app that was hidden inside the code of their iPhone app. Now they have done the same thing with this newly released Facebook Messenger app that contains certain codes and images that are pointing towards the possible release of video conferencing feature for this app in the future.

This feature could be the result of their deal with Skype, that has brought similar feature to their website on PCs. 9To5Mac, who discovered the code say that the code looks very rudimentary at this point and it is very unlikely that this feature could be enabled by a simple hack like this one. Similar feature has been found by a site called HowToArena in the code of Android version of the same application.

According to the market research firm comScore, Apple’s iOS is now the second most used smartphone platform in the United States. iOS replaced RIM’s Blackberry from the second spot while Android managed to maintain its top position.

As far as growth is concerned, iOS and Android were the only two platforms that saw growth in the three-month period ending in May. iOS, that now enjoys 26.6 percent share saw a rise of 1.4 percent whereas Android’s growth was 5.1 percent making its total share 38.1 percent.

Among others, RIM lost 4.2 percent, Microsoft lost 1.9 percent and Palm lost 0.4 percent US marketshare.

According to this report Apple also saw growth in hardware sales, and rose from 7.5 percent  to 8.7 percent. While others weren’t so lucky as Samsung’s share remained steady at 24.8 percent while Motorola and RIM’s share fell a little bit. LG was the only brand besides Apple that saw rise of 0.2 percent hardware growth.

[The Apple Blog/comScore]

According to a post by a Google employee Erica Joy on her Google+ account, Google+ app for iOS devices is now awaiting approval by Apple in the App Store. The app for Google+ is already available for Android devices and soon iOS users with Google+ accounts will be able to use the new social network with a native iOS app.

“the Google+ iPhone app has been submitted to the App store (no not today, sometime prior to today) and is awaiting approval.”

If everything went according to the plan and if Apple feels that the app is ready to go in the App Store then we should expect that the app will be available within a week.

Google+ is not yet open for public and is still in beta stages. It would be very interesting if Google releases an iPad dedicated app as well, keeping in mind that its competitor and the largest social network of the world Facebook does not have an iPad app.

[Erica Joy via 24100.net via Mashable]

Yahoo! has launched a new service for iPhone and Android devices, that makes searching for apps simpler and easier. Yahoo! has released an app in the App Store and has also added “App Search” to its search engine so you can find apps from your PC. On PC Yahoo! searches for your desired app and also shows description, screenshots, price, and overall rating so that you can know everything about the app before making a purchase.You can search for iOS and Android apps here

Y! AppSpot available for free in the App Store (here) does the same thing as “App Search” but in app environment on your mobile device. Y! AppSpot features Daily Personal Picks, Quick Search, Related Apps, At a glance shopping, and Fast & Easy Downloads.

According to a recent report by Neilsen, Apple, Google and RIM’s marketshare has not changed since the last three months. Apple’s iOS holds 27 percent marketshare where as Android remains on top with 37 percent. RIM stands at 22 percent and Microsoft with its Windows Phone 7 operating system holds 10 percent of the US smartphones marketshare.

Neilsen also found in this report that smartphones now make up about 37 percent of the total mobile market. Another interesting bit of information revealed in this report is that Android users now consume more data than iOS users. After analyzing 65,000 mobile phone bills Neilsen found that Android users consumed 582mb on average compared with the usage of iPhone users who used 492mb.

[Telegraph]

If you like Android’s slider icon tray style menu then you will surely like this tweak for your iOS device. AndroidLoader tweak for jailbroken iOS devices adds a button at the bottom of your screen by tapping which you can launch an icon tray that lists icons of all of your installed apps. You can either press the button or slide you finger from bottom of your screen to upper side to bring the tray up on screen. The tweak does not support iPad yet and only works on iPhone and iPod touch.

AndroidLoader also supports theme managers like WinterBoard and DreamBoard so that you can customize the look of the tray if you want to.

One problem that i felt while testing this tweak was that you would often accidentally launch the AndroidLoader icon tray by pressing the on screen button and that makes it very annoying, so only good use i found for this $2.99 tweak was to show off to friends that i have an Android like loader on my iPod – and they hated it…never mind.

AndroidLoader tweak for iPhone and iPod touch is available in the Cydia store under modmyi repo for $2.99.

Check out more tweaks for your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad here

WWDC 2011 is just a few days ahead and we have already started counting the days and become impatient and excited, because it is not often when Apple is expected to completely revamp its popular mobile operating system which has not changed a lot since 2007 when it was released for the first time with the original iPhone and was named iPhone OS.

I am not saying that Apple has not changed the OS since it was released for the first time 3 and half years ago, in fact Apple has made several changes to it by introducing new features and making it more stable – and of course biggest change was to change its name from iPhone OS to iOS in 2010 and making it the operating system that will be used in all of its handheld portable devices including the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

Apple has already announced that this year’s WWDC will be iOS and Mac OS X centric, indicating that both the operating systems that act as the backbone of its ecosystem will see big changes in their next major update.

Revamped Notifications

Rumors, speculations, and so called inside scoops indicate that Apple is going to revamp its notification system that it has not touched since the release of the operating system, people demand and wish for a complete overhaul of the system that can bring more functionality and management options for the users. And this change is inevitable now because a lot of third party developers have developed notification solutions for iOS that are good enough to bring the current notifications system of iOS to shame and competitors such as HP’s webOS have better notifications too, and besides everything notifications are essential for mobile users because it drives all the information on a mobile device and notifies the user about whats going on.

Widgets

A lot of reports such as this one by TechCrunch indicate that iOS will finally deliver widgets to its users. I won’t comment on this much because i am not a big fan of widgets found on Android OS, but of course we expect everything a lot better from Apple than what Google has already delivered.

Voice Recognition

Apple is reported to integrate Nuance’s voice recognition technology into iOS. Android already features a very good voice recognition system built right into it and we know Apple will do anything to compete with that. Apple iOS currently has “Voice Control” feature but that is very limited and is not widely used by consumers and we know there is a lot that can be done in this particular area. We just hope that Apple will do it this time. Check this patent by Apple and also the video below.

FaceTime over 3G

We don’t have any rumors or reports on this particular topic and the only ground we have to list this feature here is that Steve Jobs said in his iPhone 4 keynote last year that FaceTime will be Wi-Fi only in 2010…so it probably could mean that 2011 would bring the 3G video calling to iPhone and iPad…hope for the best.

Integrated Cloud services

That large data center Apple bought has to get in to good use, and what could be better than deep integration of the cloud services by Apple itself into iOS 5. Apple is expected to introduce and integrate its cloud service and cloud music player right into iOS in the coming update.

Social Integration

Apple is also expected to integrate Facebook and other popular social networks deeply into iOS 5, i don’t know how they are going to do it but if they actually end up doing this, that would be really nice. I mean how nice it would be to change your Facebook account settings from settings.app in your iPhone and post your latest status from your messages.app and also share photos and videos to Facebook right from your Photos.app, that would be really nice – right?

What do you think?