Palm CEO: I’ve ‘Never Even Used’ An iPhone – I understand hating the competition but how do you know what your competition is when you have never tried the competition?

Exclusive: Qualcomm to Power iPhone – it has never been a matter of if the iPhone will land on the Verizon network, just a matter of when.  Sounds like that will be this summer.

iPhone wins touchscreen quality test – this is probably one of the things that I will always evaluate as new phones come out as I think the touchscreen and gestures are really important on smartphones these days.

Facebook’s iPhone App Gets New Push and Sync Features – this is the first time I have used the push notifications on my iPhone and love the contact sync.  The contact sync is a small feature, but its just nice to have the pictures automatically pulled into your contacts for you.

iPhone Runs Toy Helicopter Taking Off at CES 2010 – while the iPhone still has a little bit of a wow factor when you show off some of the funny/cool apps that you can run, this would definitely make jaws drop.  Especially the live camera feed while flying the helicopter.

Apple: Three billion downloads from iPhone App Store – the App store still gives the iPhone an edge, but the playing field will be leveled as the Android Marketplace gains momentum.  At that point, I think it will come down to the software on the phone.

“As you know, today we do it by type of app and also have show popular apps and top-selling apps, et cetera,” Cook said. “We realize there’s opportunity there for further improvement and are working on that.”

Apple Insider provides a post that details a lot more information about the call.  So, what can Apple do to really improve the App Store?  Here are a few ideas on how I think they can do it:

1. Allow sub categories - This will allow users to filter down the list of apps within a category.  This would really help in the games category
2. Ratings Sort - Allow users to view a list of apps based on rating, not just free, paid, and release date.
3. Provide Preview Period – create an automatic demo mode that is available for every app.  Apple could eaily track this within the iPhone and allow users to try the game out for  a certain time period.
4. Genius - bring over Genius from iTunes but for app store purchases.  This little service could make recommendations based on past purchases
5. Improve Social Network – Improve the social network around app ratings and follow the model that Amazon uses by creating top reviewers, and have these reviews provide more weight to how the game is factored into qualifying for the top cateogires

What do you think?  How do you think Apple can improve the App Store?