According to new Google figures, Android 2.1 or higher is now installed on 83 percent of all Android smartphones, as of December 1st.

That number is up from 77 percent, posted in early November.

43.4 percent of phones have Android 2.2 while 39.6 percent are running 2.1.

A shocking 6.3 percent are still running the ancient Android 1.5, with another 10.6 percent running 1.6 (mainly G1 owners).

Google is set to launch Android 2.3 Gingerbread in the coming weeks, with a few handsets getting the update right out of the gate.

Permalink | Comments

---

Aron Embry of Texas has claimed today that his brand new Droid 2 smartphone exploded while he was making a call this morning, injuring his ear, neck and face.

Says Embry: "I heard a pop. I didn't feel any pain initially. I pulled the phone down. I felt something dripping. I realized that it probably was blood. I went into the house and as I got into the bathroom and once I got to the mirror and saw it, it was only then I kinda looked at my phone and noticed the screen had appeared to burst outward."

He then drove to his wife's job and they called 911, while also taking pictures of the damage.

His wife, Kara, had thought Aron had been in a car crash due to the massive amount of blood coming from his neck and face.

After four hours in the ER, Embry says the doctors told him he had no hearing loss or permanent damage to his eardrum.

One mobile expert, Daniel Harrison, tells Fox that he isn't convinced the phone just randomly exploded.

"The Droids are fantastic devices. It's all just a matter of how you care for the device.But it looks to me like it wasn't something that was just a manufacture defect. It looks like it was actually user caused," says Harrison.

Motorola is looking into it.

Permalink | Comments

---

NBC may be on the verge of bringing 99 cent rentals to iTunes, if a new screenshot is to be believed.

9to5Mac posted a picture that shows NBC hit show "The Office" available for purchase for $2.99 per episode or $.99 for a rental.

For now, only ABC and Fox have made their shows available for rental through iTunes at 99 cents.

Apple introduced the 99 cent rentals earlier this year, but had some initial trouble getting media companies to sign on.

NBC president Jeff Zucker had said renting for 99 cents would undermine the shows: "We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content. … We thought it would devalue our content."

We will keep you updated.

Permalink | Comments

---

Yesterday we reported that the jury trial for the case of Matthew Crippen had been delayed, after the presiding judge took 30 minutes to lecture the prosecution.

Today, the prosecution has dismissed the case, after just hours, "based on fairness and justice."

Prosecutor Allen Chiu says: "The government has decided to dismiss the indictment."

Crippen was on trial for allegedly modding Xbox 360 consoles to be able to play pirated games and homebrew.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez started the trial off yesterday with a 30-minute rant complaining about the prosecution and the government's case, with his main concerns being the prosecution's "star" witnesses.

The two witnesses in the case had both potentially broken the law, making them less credible. The first,Entertainment Software Association investigator Tony Rosario, had video of Crippen modding consoles in his home in L.A. Those videos, however, were taped secretly, in violation of California's strict privacy laws.

Microsoft security employee Ken McGrail was the second witness, the man who analyzed the consoles that were seized from Crippen's home. McGrail, however, had admitted under oath to modifying the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 back when he was in college.

Crippen was charged with two counts of breaking the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA and faced up to 10 years in prison.

The 28-year-old says he will finally be able to go back to school, needing just one more year to get his degree from Cal State Fullerton.

Permalink | Comments

---

The New York Post has reported today that Netflix is prepared to pay up to $100,000 per episode for the ability to stream in-season TV shows, such as current episodes of hits like "Glee" and "The Office."

If accurate, the move will position Netflix next to Hulu as the premier destination to view TV episodes from current running seasons.

In October, Netflix announced it had signed a deal with NBCU to bring full back catalogs of hit shows like "30 Rock," "The Office," and others to the streaming service, as well as a deal that gives Netflix the right to stream "Saturday Night Live" the day after it airs on TV.

Netflix recently began offering a streaming-only service for $8 per month in the U.S., the first time the company has offered a deal that does not include physical media rentals.

The company has spent close to $1 billion on streaming rights over the past years, placing a big bet on the future of streaming.

Permalink | Comments

---

LimeWire, once the world's most popular P2P client, was officially shut down last month, following a four-year legal battle against the record industry.

A New York federal court issued a permanent injunction against the site, ruling that LimeWire caused a "massive scale of infringement" by intentionally giving users a platform to share millions of unauthorized music tracks.

At its peak, LimeWire was seeing 50 million monthly users.

Today, the company has sent out a memo scrapping their longstanding plans to open a new legal music download store, meaning there is literally nothing left of the company.

The current LimeWire store will also shut on December 31st, and the company will not accept any new payments, effective immediately.

Permalink | Comments

---

Yesterday we reported that Amazon was preparing to purchase an investment stake in daily deal giant LivingSocial, following Google's $5.3 billion bid for market leader Groupon.

Today, Amazon has announced an investment of $175 million in the site, a deal that will put the two companies in a "deep operating partnership."

LivingSocial will use the massive cash infusion to expand to more countries.

The site is currently available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia. For those nations, the deals are available in 120 different cities.

LivingSocial says it is expanding at a rate of just under one new city per day. The site has 10 million users.

Rival Groupon is available in 300 cities and has 35 million worldwide users.

Permalink | Comments

---