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Business Insider has been running a series of “linkbait” articles lately about Windows Phone 7 and Android. The first one titled “Microsoft’s mobile business is now little more than a fantasy” was followed today by an other one titled “Hey, Android People, Is It True That The All-In Cost Of Android Is Much Higher Than $15 Per Unit?”. You see this is how things work: first you trash a product then post a follow up defending it to please both sides and generate maximum traffic. The second one is rather interesting because Henri Blognet has supposedly a close Microsoft source parroting what I, others and Microsoft Execs have been saying all along: Android isn’t free.
Continue reading Android isn’t Free ? Anything new we didn’t already know ? →
Now this is kinda interesting; gaming industry veteran, Mark DeLoura, just quit his job as a gaming developer advocate at Google only four months after being hired by the search giant. This wouldn’t really be super newsworthy if he didn’t actually praise Microsoft’s XNA + Silverlight effort as being the closets to enable developers to finally develop multi-platform (and cloud based games) without the need to write / code in different languages:
As game developers we’ve talked about the idea of making multiple-platform game access simpler for a long time – trans-platform play where the experiences may be different, as opposed to cross-platform play where the experiences are the same – and it should be easier for developers to create clients for web, mobile and desktop without needing to write them in completely different languages or using vastly different SDKs. Microsoft is closest to this with XNA and Silverlight across multiple platforms; Apple’s SDKs across iPhone, iPad and Mac OSX are pretty cleverly designed as well; and Google is approaching it with Android NDK and Chrome Native Client.
Continue reading Google Gaming Developer Advocate quits after only four months, praises XNA and Silverlight →
There’s been a lot of rumors, leaks, blurry videos etc but this is all moot now that Samsung has officially unveiled the product via a dedicated teaser website. The best way to describe the Samsung Galaxy Tab is just to say that it’s a over-sized version of the Galaxy S. Nearly everything about it (software, hardware specs) is identical to the Galaxy S. The one major difference is the 7inch screen (compare to 4″on the Galaxy S) and the 3.2Mpix camera. Similar to the Galaxy S the Tab will be able to playback HD movie thanks to the Hummingbird Chipset. According to the teaser the official launch is set to take place on September 2nd at the IFA convention in Germany. Check out the teaser video after the break:
Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Tab Android 2.2 tablet officially unveiled →
It looks like the HTC Google Chrome OS / Android tablet rumors just won’t die. The latest we heard is that this mysterious slate will launch this november in the US (on Verizon?) and comes news that Israeli touchscreen maker N-trig is supplying the capacitive digitizers to HTC. What is interesting here is that N-trig is close Microsoft partner (Microsoft has also invested in the company last year) and their claim of fame is the fact that they were the first company to have a shipping capacitive screen that worked alongside a pressure sensitive pen/stylus. Pen and inking isn’t really something Google’s products are know to do well (Android or Chrome OS) so one has to wonder why HTC will go for the more expensive N-trig panels instead of “regular” capacitive panels from companies like Cypress, Sharp etc. This is all rumors though and nobody know for sure if this so-called tablet is really based on and Google OS and not Windows.
Continue reading N-trig to provide Capacitive Touchscreen panels for the rumored HTC Chrome OS / Android tablet →
The Engadget boys just got their hands on the two Dell Thunder prototypes we have seen last week and posted a quick hands-on. The most interesting part is that one of the devices apparently features a relatively high-res LCD display (the other one has a regular WVGA LCD). They think that it’s 1280×768 but this is impossible primalary because the maximum display resolution supported by then Qualcomm QSD8×50 Snapdragon is 1280×720. My guess would be WSVGA 1024×600 but I could be wrong. The glass is also slightly curved which seems to be a odd thing especially when is comes to viewing angle performance. The on both device is Android 2.1 and the performances is comparable to any other Snapdragon powered Android handset. Check out the video after the break:
Continue reading Dell Thunder Hands-on preview →
Looks like the owner of the Dell Thunder Android device we have seen earlier has been busy handing out blurry pictures of the handsets (looks likehe has 2 of them) to a couple of sites today. Nothing really new here other than the fact that these pictures are not as crappy as the previous ones..I frankly don’t find the device to be really attractive when compared to the current smartphone on the market.
Continue reading More Dell Thunder live pictures →
Google has just announced Voice Actions for Android in an attempt to one-up Microsoft’s Tellme technology. Voice Actions are are a series of spoken commands that let you control your phone using your voice. You can for example send a text message just by speaking it and the phone will automatically write it down for you. Sounds familiar right? Yup Microsoft has had this feature for a while now but thanks to poor marketing, OEMs, OS integration , whatever you want to call MS’s mobile strategy before Windows Phone 7…nobody has ever heard/used this (I’m talking about the average Joe here obviously). Voice Actions can also used to call people, listen to music etc…exactly like Voice Command on my iPad 3800 PocketPC bought in 2001. This kind of stuff makes you realise how much Redmond screwed up since then. Anyway this is good news for all the Android Users out there….if they have Android 2.2. Check out the promotional video after the break:
Continue reading Google launches Voice Actions for Android →
The Dell Thunder Android handset that was part of the gigantic leak a few months ago is apparently being tested in the wild. The Thunder is currently running Android 2.1 without any Dell customization on top and features a 4.1″ AMOLED screen according to the leak. The device is also capable of recording 720P videos with its 8Mpix camera (and LED). I’m also guessing that it packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon clocked at 1GHz. Check out the blurry video after the break:
Continue reading Dell Thunder Android handset in the wild →
This is nothing more that a rumor but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be true. So what is actually happening? Well it is starting to look like Google is getting a bit nervous about the gaming capabilities of Android especially now that every Windows Phone 7 devices will have Xbox Live integration and Apple iPhone’s gigantic library of games (and upcoming gaming hub). According to sources, the Mountain View company has enlisted Sony Ericsson to build a Android Gaming Platform to be integrated into Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) similar to what the competitors I previously mentioned are doing. SE is also apparently building a PSP-Like smartphone that will feature a sliding gamepad, 3.7″/4″ screen 1ghz SnapDragon SoC running Android 3.0 etc.
Continue reading Sony Ericsson building Android 3.0 gaming platform and PSP style phone: Fragmentation you said? →
Google has just updated its Google Maps application for Android handsets today with the new places feature enabling users to easily find the nearest restaurant, movie theater, store etc similar to what Yelp offers. Google Maps 4.4 is currently only available on Android 1.6 + devices (through the Android Market) and will later be released on BlackBerry. No word yet on the Windows Mobile version thought (wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t one).
Continue reading Google Maps Mobile 4.4 includes new Places feature →
Forgot to posted about this yesterday but it’s starting to look like the Nexus One is on the verge of becoming a collectors item. Last week Google announced that it had received its last batch of Nexus One handsets and that once they are sold the company will close its online web-store (it is now the case as of yesterday). Interestingly carriers allover the world are also out of stock and there’s no guarantee that it will ever change. The HTC Desire will supposedly replace it in their catalogs. Was Google’s strategy a failure (selling a google branded phone)? In my opinion the Motorola Droid did more for Android’s success than the Nexus One…
Via Google
Google can deny it all day long but the fact is that the Android ecosystem is suffering from hardware fragmentation and things aren’t looking like they are going to get better any time soon. One of the main hardware difference between Android devices is he GPU which is part of the SoC (System On a Chip / Chipset) powering the handset. There’s currently three big players in the market today: Qualcomm’s SnapDragon SoC with the Adreno 200 GPU, TI OMAP 3XXX with the Power VR SGX 530/535 and finally Samsung’s Hummingbird (S5PC110A01) with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU all three of them feature a CortexA8 CPU core. Android and Me wrapped up a couple of benchmarks comparing them and the final verdict is clear as bottled water. Samsung’s Hummingbird is heads and shoulder above the competition thanks to the SGX540 GPU, followed by TI’s and Qualcomm’s chipsets. This should come as no surprise, the SGX540 is currently the most powerful mobile GPU on the market but one has to take into account the quality of the drivers. Qualcomm has been far behind in this sector ever since its acquisition of AMD/ATI’s mobile GPU division nearly 2 years ago. Benchmarks conducted on Windows Mobile devices like the HTC HD2 (SnapDragon with Adreno 200/AMD Z430 GPU) have shown up to a %500 increase in performance in some bechnmarks when homemade/tweaked drivers where used instead of the ones supplied with the retail device. This doesn’t mean that it can rival Samsung’s SGX540 equipped handsets like the Galaxy S line of Android phones but SnapDragon based devices would have graphics performances more in line with what you should expect from a hing-end smartphone in 2010. It will be interesting to see how things will be like on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform (Only Qualcomm is certified to provide chipset for the first WP7 handsets) now that Microsoft will provide/certify the drivers. From what I have seen the graphics performance of the prototype devices is tons better than what we have now on the market. It has been said by me many times (and others who have played with the Samsung Taylor): the UI of WP7 ( Direct3D fully hardware accelerate by the Adreno GPU) is more responsive than the iPhone. Things will only get better in the future when devices like the HTC Mondrian WP7 handset will supposedly feature the updated Snapdragon core and when Google finally sets minimum performance and hardware requirement in a future version of Android (rumored to come in Android 3.0).
Continue reading Mobile GPU performance comparison →
Google has just released today a new visual programming tool for Android called App Inventor to enable each and everybody to “develop” Android applications without writing a single line of code.There’s obviously nothing really new here given that Palm has already done this with Ares a few months ago and Nokia too. The downside to these types of tools comes from the fact that you can’t really develop anytype of serious application because of the restricted number of “visual blocks” available to the user. App Inventor can be describe are a really really dumbed down version of Microsoft Expression Blend. Still nice to see Google pushing the Android platform this hard. Check out the video after the break:
Continue reading Google releases App Inventor visual programing tool for Android →
The Google team has updated the mobile version of YouTube today with a new m.youtube.com site featuring an HTML5 enabled interface. Contrary to the majority I not going to hype this thing up as if it was the second coming of the Christ just because it uses HTML5 for the UI and because if bypasses Apple’s stupid “3G = Crappy quality video” restriction in the native YouTube application. You heard that right folks! Everybody’s going gaga over this thing because the iPhone can now playback good quality YouTube videos over 3G…just like Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones with their native YouTube application…meh. The new UI is a nice touch but nothing mind blowing at all (and MS is screwed once again here because of the lack of HTML5 support in IE Mobile)…And just to be clear, the video aren’t in HTML5, only the UI. Check the video demo after the break:
Continue reading New HTML5 YouTube Mobile site launched →
As I said yesterday, Eldar Murtazin doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to breaking news and this has once again been the case today when Google’s Android’s Open Source and Compatibility Tech Lead, Dan Morrill decided to lay the smack down on the supposedly leaked features of Gingerbread aka Android 3.0:
-I love it when people just make stuff up and report it as news.
- @Adontai You shouldn’t believe everything you read, no.
- In summary, please remember that rumors are not official announcements. 
Source: Twitter 1, 2, 3
Got some salt nearby? Grab it and take a seat. According to E.Murtazin who isn’t the most trustworthy source around…. Google is aiming to take a similar approach to Windows Phone 7 with the upcoming Android 3.0 aka gingerbread release at the end of the yer. OEMs will supposedly no longer be able to customize the UI and there will be minimum specifications for the hardware:
•Android 3.0 Gingerbread will be released in mid- October (around 15 -16th), 2010. First handsets shipping in November/December – for the Holiday Season.
•Minimum hardware requirements for Android 3.0 devices are: 1GHZ CPU, 512MB or RAM, displays from 3.5” and higher.
•New 1280×760 resolution available for the devices with displays of 4” and higher.
•Completely revamped user interface. If you want to get a feeling of what Android 3.0 Gingerbread UX is like, check out the Gallery App on Nexus One. The same overall feel, light animated transitions,etc. Natively, through all the UI.
•Android’s split into 2 branches becomes official. 3.0 for top of the line/high end devices. Cheap, low-end mass market handsets will keep Android 2.1/2.2
Salt please!
Via : Unwiredview
Google has released the source code of Android 2.2 today alongside the Motorola Droid X launch event:
To celebrate, we are open-sourcing the new 2.2 version of Android, which we call Froyo, to our partners who manufacture Android devices around the world. Customers will enjoy great new features and improved browser performance. And developers will benefit from new tools such as Android cloud-to-device messaging (which makes it easier for mobile applications to sync data).
User should expect to see Android 2.2 for their device later this summer.
Source: Google
Google has updated its Google Maps application for Android with a couple of new features including integration of Google Latitude and public transit transportation. Google must me applauded for all the updates and added features that are being including nearly every month. Microsoft is also doing a good job latetly thanks to the new Bing Maps applications SDK that enables third-party developers to create Silverlight based applications for Bing Maps (application that can be easily ported to Windows Phone 7 like Weather Bug) but the Bing Team really has to work on local deals to add basic features like live traffic outside of the US and UK, public transit etc..The Google Maps 4.3 application is currently available on the Android Market for devices running Android 1.6+.
Source: Google Mobile Blog
XDA user jonnobright received the following mail from HTC’s tech Support claiming that the Android 2.2 will be pushed Over The Air to the HTC Desire in less than two weeks:
Dear Jonathan, Thank you for contacting us in regards to your flash player issue. Within the next 2 weeks HTC wil release the Android 2.2 OS over the air. The will enable the lastest version of Adobe Flash Player on your device and will resolve any exisiting issues. I trust that this resolves your query, please do not hesitate to contact us again if required. Thank you for contacting HTC. Best regards, xxxxxxxxxxxxx HTC Technical Support
To send a reply to this message or let me know I have successfully answered your question log in to our ContactUs site using your email address and your ticket number xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Can this be true? Now HTC’s Support track record I would take the following mail with a pinch of salt. But it would be awesome if it was indeed true.
source: XDA-devs via Pocketnow
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