Verizon has announced the upcoming HTC Thunderbolt with LTE 4G support, a likely successor to the very popular HTC Incredible.

The smartphone has a large 4.3-inch Super LCD display, a 1GHz processor, and run on Android 2.2 with HTC Sense 2.0. The updated Sense has the new "Fast Boot" for quicker booting of the OS.

When connected to Verizon's LTE 4G, the carrier says users should expect down speeds of 5-12Mbps and up speeds of 2-5Mbps.

The device has Mobile Hotspot capability for sharing the 4G connection with up to 8 Wi-Fi devices, as well.

Additionally, the smartphone has an 8MP standard camera and a 1.3MP front-side camera, along with Dolby and SRS surround sound.

Skype video conferencing is built right into Sense and the Thunderbolt has DLNA streaming multimedia support.

Says Jason Mackenzie, president of HTC Americas (via Engadget):

We are proud to not only be bringing one of the first 4G LTE Android smartphones to the Verizon Wireless network, but to offer people the unprecedented speed and ease of use that the HTC ThunderBolt provides to them. What makes 4G so compelling is not just technology, but what the technology allows people to do. With HTC ThunderBolt and the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network, 4G is brought to life as people stay connected with friends, family and content faster than ever before possible.

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Apple has pulled the popular VLC media player application from the iOS App Store, following an argument over the GPL with VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmont.

Denis-Courmont had filed a lawsuit against Apple in late 2010.

Under a standard GNU General Public License (GPL), VLC is available for Macs, Windows and Linux machines for free, and while it was free for iOS, the open-source nature of the application was compromised by Apple.

Says Free Software Federation's Brett Smith (via PCM):

The GPL gives Apple permission to distribute this software through the App Store. All they would have to do is follow the license's conditions to help keep the software free. Instead, Apple has decided that they prefer to impose Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and proprietary legal terms on all programs in the App Store.

Denis-Courmont had charged Apple with copyright infringement in the suit filed October 26th, but the app remained in the store until yesterday.

Writes the developer of the decision (via VLC):

On January 7th, Apple removed VLC media player from its application store for iDevices. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved - the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.

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Nintendo has posted the final hardware specs for the 3DS handheld this week, and one glaring issue appears to be the battery life.

In the past, the Nintendo DS line has had very good battery lives, with the original DS lasting 10 to 14 hours, the DS Lite lasting 15 to 19 hours, the DSi lasting 9 to 14, and the large-screened DSi XL lasting 13 to 17 hours.

For the upcoming 3DS, battery life when running a game in 3D, is only 3-5 hours, with some warning that the actual time may be closer to the lower end of that range unless Wi-Fi is turned off.

Battery life is a measly 5-8 hours when running regular DS games.

President Satoru Iwata said back in October:

As for the battery, it is inevitable that Nintendo 3DS will be a device which requires more frequent recharging than Nintendo DS. This is why we are going to include the cradle, which is a dedicated battery charger. Perhaps we may need to dispatch to our consumers a message, something like, 'Please place your Nintendo 3DS on the cradle as soon as you return home with it.'

It is unclear how much the cradle will sell for.

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Launched on January 6th, the Mac App Store is already seeing its apps pirated or modified, thanks to lax security from developers and Apple.

Some of the paid apps "do not properly validate App Store receipts," allowing users to download the programs and not pay for them.

App Store receipts from any previous purchase (even on free apps) can be copy-and-pasted to validate the new downloads.

John Gruber (of Daring Fireball), does note that the 'hack' "isn't true for all paid Mac App Store apps."

It does affect apps where the "developers were lax about applying Apple's recommendations on validating store receipts. The app checks to ensure there is a valid receipt, but it doesn't check that the ID listed on the receipt belongs to the app," elaborates eW.

Although it is unclear how many apps are affected, insanely popular game 'Angry Birds' is one that can be pirated.

Apple said there were over 1 million downloads on the first day of the Store.

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New figures from comScore say today that Android has finally surpassed Apple's iOS for second place in the U.S. smartphone OS market.

For the three month period ended November 30th, RIM's BlackBerry led the way at 33.5 percent, followed by Android at 26 percent and iOS at 25 percent.

At the end of August, BlackBerry had 37.6 percent share, with Android taking the lion's share of what RIM lost. Apple only added 0.8 percent to its share during the period.

Furthermore, a Nielsen report shows that 31 percent of Americans now use a smartphone, leading to a strong increase in competition from smartphone makers.

If the WSJ is accurate, Apple will launch a CDMA Verizon iPhone on Tuesday, which is expected to add over 10 million iOS sales in the Q1 2011.

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