Android - page 72

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs could get a little ticked-off when speaking about Android. At one point, Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson: “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” Well, Google certainly knows how to push Steve’s buttons. The latest example: Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of the Mountain View, Calif. company, says Android was way out ahead of the iPhone – sort of. Kind of. Well, pretty close, okay?

After making headlines in 2010 by yanking its recommendation of the iPhone 4, the advocacy group Consumer Reports is now picking Android smartphones as a better buy than the iconic Apple handset. A review pointing to larger screens and faster 4G networks seems to run counter to record-breaking sales of the iPhone 4S.

Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.

Think Android phones are pieces of junk? Now you’ve got the data to prove it. A recent study has conclusively proven Android phones are much more prone to breaking than iPhones and even BlackBerries, and their cheapness is costing telecoms big: up to $2 billion a year, in fact.

Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.

Remember the old line about the enemy of your enemy is your friend? Well, that could apply to how Apple views the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon. Originally seen as a rival to the iPad, the $199 7-inch device could actually scramble an already disorganized band of Android-based Apple competitors.

Despite a number of recent courtroom victories which have seen Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 banned in both Australia and Europe, one small Spanish firm has proven Apple doesn’t always get its own way in front of a judge.

The Cupertino computer giant just lost a case against NT-K, which makes Android tablets in Spain, after it pulled the company into court and claimed that NT-K’s device rips off the iPad.

Although the gap between Apple and Android appears to be shrinking in terms of overall market share, it’s bigger than ever when it comes to the share of the web. In October, web-connected iOS devices rose to 61.6 percent. By comparison, online Android devices comprise 18.9 percent, a paltry sliver of Google’s overall mobile market share.

Care to see just what Apple means when they talk about Android’s fragmentation problem? Check out this incredible chart put together by Michael Degusta. Not only are most Android phones out of date, but almost half of the smartphones on this chart have never been up-to-date with the latest version of Android OS, even at release!

Comparatively, every release of iOS has been backwards compatible for at least three years. No wonder the iPhone developer community is so strong: devs and users alike can count on almost every iPhone owner being on the current, most bug-free version of iOS!

If Apple needed another argument in favor of the iPhone, Sprint’s CEO Wednesday offered up a whopper: iOS devices are 50 percent more efficient than Android handsets when it comes to slurping up 3G data. The comment seems to confirm previous reports that devices running Google’s mobile operating system are the data hogs, not iPhones.

Forty percent of Blackberry owners say they want to switch to another smartphone. Following a service outage and an upcoming move to a new operating system, business professionals surveyed in the U.K. see Apple as the preferred alternative to trouble-plagued Research in Motion.

Tony Fadell is often referred to as the ‘father of the iPod’. He’s a former Apple engineer who helped develop Apple’s first portable music player along with Jeff Robbin, and he’s just announced a new 100-person startup called Nest Labs.

Having been a former DJ and overseeing 18 iterations of the iPod and the three generations of the iPhone, we’ve been keen to find out what Fadell and his company have been working on. But it isn’t a revolutionary new music player or communication device. It’s a thermostat.

A first-ever drop in smartphone sales could be good news for Apple but portend ‘ominous signs’ for the many companies tied to the Android mobile operating system. Despite launching several Android-based phones, carriers AT&T and Verizon both reported a drop-off in smartphone sales during the September quarter, one analyst noted Monday.

How well are U.S. carriers selling the iPhone? Verizon Wireless, the second domestic carrier to get the Apple handset, announced it sold 2 million of the smartphones during the third quarter. The company did not reveal how many of the latest iPhone 4S units it sold, however.

Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of mobile, doesn’t particularly care for Siri and the idea that the iPhone 4S could be your personal assistant. Rubin says it’s just a little weird for people to be talking to their phone. Those words he’s going to eat.

While sometimes it may seem that Samsung tries its hardest to taunt Apple’s legal department, the company’s mobile president has revealed that its latest Galaxy Nexus smartphone was built to avoid Apple patents, saving the Korean company yet another legal battle.

Sometimes is seems as though Samsung puts its greatest efforts into causing a ruckus with Apple’s legal team. The Korean electronics giant is already involved in countless legal spats with Apple for allegedly copying the iPhone and iPad, but it continues to closely follow Apple’s products… or just rip them off completely.

It’s USB charger, for example, is an exact replica of Apple’s, only in black instead of white. It recently littered one its retail stores with a bunch of Apple icons for the App Store and Safari. And its latest trick? Using an iPhone screenshot to sell its Galaxy Player 5.0 media device.

How do you sell a security product to owners of devices that have no real security problem? You get into hand-holding business. That’s what it’s like for Lookout Mobile Security, a San Francisco, Calif. firm unveiling Tuesday the free Lookout for iPhone app. Kevin Mahaffey, co-Founder and CTO, Lookout Mobile Security, says his new app is all about positive reinforcement.

Australia may soon become an Android-free zone. That’s the opinion of patent experts after an Australian court hit Samsung with a temporary sales ban. Although the sales halt mentions only the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the patents involved could touch every tablet and smartphone based on Google’s mobile software.

The developers at Myriad are working on porting Android apps to the iPad. Alien Dalvik 2.0 is a project that aims to run apps coded for Android in the iPad’s iOS environment.

Alien Dalvik effectively wraps Android apps in runtime packaging to create a seamless experience for the user. Android apps can be run on the iPad’s home screen like regular App Store apps.

Usually, where there’s smoke, there’s fire — except in the case of the iPad. Wealthy consumers are overwhelmingly opting for the Apple tablet, despite Amazon’s recent introduction of the Kindle Fire, a $199 alternative to the pricier iPad, indicates a survey of preferences based on income levels. More than 9 out of 10 tablet buyers with incomes above $100,000 prefer the Apple device, according to the figures.

Samsung’s desperate bid to save its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Australia has been turned down by Apple, and could mean that one of the iPad’s biggest Android rival never sees its launch down under.

Apple continues to out-muscle Android online, according to a new report of devices using the Internet. Despite fewer mobile devices, iOS-powered products in September collectively accounted for 54.65 percent of the mobile market, versus 16.25 percent for Android.

Yesterday, Amazon announced what is likely the first and only true alternative to the iPad in the Kindle Fire, a $199 Android-based tablet smartly tied into Android rich cloud ecosystem of games, apps, books and video on demand.

No matter how you slice it, the Kindle Fire is the first tablet to really understand that most of what makes a mobile device isn’t just hardware or an off-the-shelf operating system, but a library of easily-accessed contents. It’s not just the apps, it’s the movies, it’s the music, it’s the magazines, it’s the ebooks. And Amazon is going to provide these things for $300 less than Apple does.

So now that all the dust has settled, we want to know what you think: does Apple have anything to worry about from the Kindle Fire, or is this less a fire than a bunch of smoke?

[polldaddy poll=”5544143″]

Let us know your answer in our poll after the jump, and feel free to expand upon them in the comments.

More than 75 percent of the handsets T-Mobile sells are smartphones, the carrier told a gathering at this week’s Mobilize 2011 forum held in San Francisco. What’s more, 90 percent of those smartphones are powered by the Android operating system.