Android - page 77

This week, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch all published rumors that Apple plans to compete in the mid-ranged smartphone sector, with the launch of a smaller, more affordable iPhone, to be sold alongside the iPhone 4. At Cult of Mac, we predicted as much six weeks ago.

Of course, rumors of a smaller, cheaper iPhone are nothing new. They’ve been around for almost as long as the iPhone itself. And with good reason. Any seasoned Apple watcher will recognize this as Steve Jobs’ standard MO. Launch an iconic, up-market product, allow the market for it to grow and mature, and when the underlying technology becomes cheap enough, introduce a smaller, more affordable mass market version.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — Android tablets have a ways to go — that seems to be the emerging consensus here at CES.

I couldn’t help but notice all the floor chatter going on while people were playing with any one of the dozens of new Android tablets here on display at CES. As I listened, the crowd consensus became clear to me—not only are all the new Android tabs not as good as the iPad, they’re not even close.

Why? Well that’s what I started wondering. I wanted to hear unfiltered reviews on what potential users were thinking. So after hearing the 100th person murmur something like, “this doesn’t work nearly as good as the iPad,” I starting getting nosy and asking them why.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — The very next time I hear the term “iPhone-killer,”  I will go absolutely Looney-Tunes nuts. I will tear up telephone books, gargle with raw eggs and Marmite, the whole bit. Seriously.

On the other hand, Samsung really does seem to be taking precise aim at the iPhone 4 with their new Infuse 4G Android smartphone announced yesterday. They’re claiming that, when (if) released, it’ll be the lightest, thinnest phone on the market, and it’ll be equipped with oodles of goodies: a 4.5-inch, “next-generation” Super AMOLED screen (which they say will have better readability in bright sunlight) and a snappy 1.2 ghz processor. And get this — it’ll sit exclusively in the AT&T stable.

CoM got invited to the PepCom Digital Experience special press event Wednesday evening, so I took the opportunity to spend some time with Motorola’s new “iPad killer.” Video and photos after the jump.

Amazon has announced that they will be throwing their hat into the App Marketplace ring by opening up the Amazon Appstore Developer Portal, which will allow developers of Android apps to submit apps for their upcoming Amazon Appstore for Android. It’s an interesting move, and one that might end up kicking Google’s own Android Marketplace right in the teeth.

This is a guest post by the author of the controversial CrApple Store blog, written by a former Apple Genius. [More on the CrApple Store here]

If you can cast your minds back 10 years, you might remember the slight excitement of getting a new mobile phone.

Features like a colour screen, customisable ringtones, a camera and games were all part of the learning experience that came along with obtaining a new handset year after year.

In recent years I’ve found this geek factor to be missing from the yearly iOS update (same phone, same-ish software and settings), and with the signal/bumper fiasco with this year’s iPhone, I decided that having to have a case on a phone I just paid £500 was not acceptable.

Along with Apple’s childish behaviour of putting up videos of other manufacturers’ handsets supposedly doing a similar thing, I thought enough was enough and decided to return my iPhone 4 for a full refund. Also not happy with paying hundreds of pounds for last year’s 3GS model, I thought what better opportunity than to dip my toe into the Android platform, and see what, at least some of the fuss was about.

Now, every day I regret the purchase of an Android handset.

Although they were once Thor-like with the Mjolnir of the ban hammer, Apple has become much more sparing and reluctant to ban apps outright from the App Store in recent months… a sea change that can probably be leveled more at Cupertino’s belated but common sense clarification of the App Store approval guidelines.

Bans still happen, though: an emulator here, a program tapping private APIs there, but these days, Apple’s bans are a lot less sensational than they once were. That’s what makes Apple’s latest ban so puzzling: they decided to ban a small Danish magazine app about Google’s Android OS from the App Store.

Why? According to the CEO of publisher Mediaprovider, his conversation with Apple about the app went something like this:

“So what’s the problem?” Dixon asked, knowing full well what the problem was.

“You know… your magazine,” replied the Apple rep, who identified himself only as Richard. “It’s just about Android…. we can’t have that in our App Store.”

Although this wouldn’t be a surprising ban a year ago, these days, it seems more like Richard was being a little overzealous than official Apple policy against informational Android apps to us: after all, the App Store has several apps dedicated to competing products, such as Windows 7. Granted, the war between iOS and Android these days is a lot more heated than the one between Windows and OS X — largely because Apple recognizes that mobile is the future of computing, and desktop OSes are the past — but Apple already knows that Android will eventually dominate iOS when it comes to total marketshare. Why ban an app about Android, then? Apple’s not concerned with total domination of the market… just the domination of the slice of the market that matters most.

When Steve Jobs said that Android was fragmented, here’s exactly what he meant: according to Rovio, who make the popular mobile game Angry Birds, they are struggling to support the game on all of the different Android hardware. In comparison, iOS development is easy as a dream.

Steve Wozniak — that wonderful bear of a tech evangelist — may love his iPhone, but he’s not banking on iOS to handily win the smartphone wars: instead, the Apple co-founder says that Google’s Android operating system will be the dominating platform.

The team behind OpeniBoot, which allows users to run the Android OS on the iPhone 3G, are now hard at work on porting the hack to the iPhone 4 and the iPad.

Jailbreak expert Hexxeh posted a video on his blog yesterday that shows OpeniBoot running on the iPad. There’s not much to see at this point, but the video’s below if you’d like to see it.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIixUYaLufo

This is a great step towards booting Android on Apple’s latest iOS devices, and it shouldn’t be too long before the hack is available for release.

If you have an iPhone 2G, 3G, or first-gen iPod Touch, and you’d like to try booting Android, it’s now even easier through Cydia – check out John’s recent post here.

Leaving aside why you would want to run Android when you have access to iOS, we were absolutely amazed when hacker David Wong figured out how to install and dual boot Android alongside iOS on the original iPhone earlier this year. Even so, we were reluctant to try the hack ourselves: the process was convoluted, to say the very least.

It’s amazing, though, how far the instructions have come in a little over half a year, though: you can now install Android 2.1 Froyo on your first generation iPhone or iPhone 3G so simply that you don’t even need to have a computer handy to do it.

That’s right: as long as your iPhone or iPhone 3G is already jailbroken and running at least iOS 3.1.2, you can now install Android on your handset entirely through Cydia.

Although there are a lot of gadget makers looking to come out with their own answers to the iPad in the coming months — most notably RIM with the BlackBerry Playbook and Samsung with the Galaxy Tab — you’ve got to give them credit: the tablets they are releasing aren’t just iPad clones.

You can’t say the same for this tablet though, plucked out of a cheap electronics shop in the alleys of Shaghai: it’s an iPad clone through and through.

Sure, they’re not likely to impress Apple fans, but Samsung’s actually one of the few companies around that is managing to release products to rival Apple’s iOS devices. The Samsung Galaxy S is a capable smartphone that almost has the luster of the iPhone 4; likewise, the Galaxy Tab is probably the only real competition to the iPad out there in the tablet market.

What about Samsung’s answer to the iPod Touch, though? Meet the Samsung Galaxy Player in this utterly charming little commercial.

It’s war! Again. Or still. Whatever. Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched an “epic rant” during an earnings call this week blasting Google’s “fragmented,” er, “open” approach to apps and extolling the virtues of Apple’s “closed,” I mean “integrated” iOS platform.

“We think Android is very fragmented and getting more fragmented by the day… We believe integrated will trump fragmented every time.”

In retaliation, Google mobile strategy chief Andy Rubin apparently posted the following dorky reply on Twitter:

the definition of open: ‘mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make’.

That’s a set of Linux commands for copying Android.

Does Rubin have a point? No, seriously. What’s his point?

Since Google hasn’t mounted a coherent defense against fragmen… I mean the open approach to mobile platforms, does anyone here want to try?

Go here to read the whole post on IT World.

Here’s a juicy excerpt, already up on YouTube, from Apple’s conference call today where Steve Jobs dropped by and  bashed Google repeatedly with an Apple-shaped hammer.

Once Apple announced its own baked-in Game Center for iOS, OpenFeint — the previous go-to mobile social gaming network — seemed to lose a bit of its luster, but the guys Aurora Feint seem to have a plan and they’re falling through with it: starting today, OpenFeint is now available on the Android operating system.

But Aurora Feint’s strategy in dealing with Game Center isn’t to abandon iOS. Oh no: this news is very relevant to iOS gamers because now that OpenFeint is on Android, you can now take part in cross-platform multiplayer games, achievements, leaderboards and friending in Fruit Ninja, MiniSquadron, Super Slyder, The Moron Test and Tic-Tac Toe… with fifteen other titles to follow this month.

At the very least, the relevance here to iOS gamers is they now have twice as many people to play Tic Tac Toe against… I just can’t wait for iOS vs. Android OpenFeint deathmatch tournaments.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY-uRRCARJw&feature=player_embedded

This video purports itself to be real footage of iOS 4.0 running on an HTC smartphone, but it’s almost certainly just a skinjob: not only would hacking iOS to run on another device be nearly impossible without access to the source code, but there’s some tell tale signs (like missing folder animation, wallpaper that moves along with pages and the ability to delete the iTunes and App Store icons from the homescreen) that this isn’t what it appears to be.

Nonetheless, we’re impressed, if just by the fact someone went to so much trouble to make Android look so much like iOS. Of course, if you’re going to put in those kind of man hours, one wonders why you would bother buying the inferior phone to begin with…

[via HardMac]

Linux fiends have a new operating system to hate in the OS wars, according to web traffic firm Net Application: iOS overtook Linux as the third biggest browsing browsing platform in uly of this year.

According to Net Applications’ data, iOS represented 1.06 percent of all web traffic in July, compared to the 0.93 percent share of Linux. Google’s Android operating system, which technically bests iOS’ numbers when it comes to installs, is only 0.18 oercent.

It gets worse. In July, iOS encompassed 1.13% of all web traffic, while Linux shrank even more to 0.85% and Google’s Android shot up to 0.20%.

iOS is now the third most popular web browsing platform in the world, behind only Windows and OS X. And it doesn’t have far to go before it knocks out Snow Leopard, which accounts for just 2.59 percent of all web traffic. Wow.

[via Apple Insider]

To their credit, Aurora Feint has always been remarkably blase about iOS 4.1’s built-in Game Center, even though they currently run the business of the App Store’s biggest gaming social network and match-making service, OpenFeint. In fact, they went as far as to say they were “thrilled” about Game Center, boasting about big future plans for the service… despite Game Center’s seemingly direct competition.

OpenFeint’s plans in an iOS ecosystem with Game Center preinstalled on every device are now becoming clearer, and it seems like Aurora Feint have figured out a killer feature that only their service can provide to gamers: the ability to play cross-form multiplayer matches in games that are available on both iOS and Google Android.

The OpenFeint PlayTime network will not only let you play your buddy even if he is shackled to his Android phone, but the software supports real-time video chat, as well as bot support. That latter addition is particularly interesting, as it means that if a player drops in a multiplayer match, an AI-controlled opponent will seamlessly take his place.

This is a smooth move on the part of Aurora Feint giving developers who have titles on more than one mobile platform a strong incentive to bake both Game Center and OpenFeint support into their titles. I just wish, as a player, I could keep my achievement points in both networks synced.

The findings of a recent survey by Coupons.com has all the trappings of some sort of offensive, stereotypical joke… but without the punchline.

Analyzing the findings of how both users on both the Android and iOS operating systems use their website, Coupons.com came to some interesting findings as to what separates the two.

iPhone users? According to Coupons.com, they can best be described as “feminine-smelling, chicken-eating, entertainment-reading fish owners.”

Android users, though, are “manly-scented, pork-eating, news-reading bird lovers.”

These results certainly don’t seem to apply to me. On one hand, I fall into the Android category as far as my pheremonal stink and budgerigar ownership are concerned, but I certainly prefer chicken to pork, and I use iOS exclusively… which according to Coupons’ research, makes me some sort of weird, fish-stroking girl. And what about pork-abstaining Android users, Hassidic and halal alike? There is more research to be done here methinks, Coupons.com.

[via Gizmodo]

Today, the finest minds from Google, HTC, and T-Mobile on hand to launch the Android platform proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the iPhone’s monomaniacal “whole widget” development model is the only way to claim genuinely new territory in a market. The T-Mobile G1 comes up tragically short in the race to launch a widespread, modern mobile OS to prevent the proliferation of Windows Mobile. As Steve Jobs has learned, if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself. In fact, the Android Troika is making the same assumptions that have ensured that Linux will always be a marginal desktop OS in developed markets. Here are the top three reasons why:

3. Presuming that Someone Else Will Fix Your Problems

Google has left a lot undone with Android: no built-in Exchange support; no desktop syncing; no video playback; a comically variable UI. But it’s OK, Google says: third-party developers will definitely come up with solutions. While that’s probably true, it also means that standards won’t get established for these features, which means that new features will always lag behind more tightly controlled platforms like the iPhone. Worse, the Exchange omission ensures that this will never play with corporate IT environments that are looking to replace a fleet of aging Treos right now. That means the only credible alternative to Windows Mobile and BlackBerry? iPhone. I never thought I would see the day when Apple was more corporate friendly than the open alternative.

As assumed, Google announced yesterday that they have no interest in entering the mobile hardware game. There is no gPhone. Instead, the company took the wraps off of the Open Handset Alliance, a 30+ company coalition featuring software companies, handset makers, network operators, and web companies that claim to be committed to a genuinely open mobile phone platform.

That platform is Android, a linux-based operating system and software stack originally developed by a start-up of the same name that Google absorbed in 2005. Basically, if you license Android, you can power a cell phone. It’s everything except the phone itself.

It’s exactly what I hoped for. T-Mobile, Samsung, HTC, Motorola and others are on board, and this time next year, there could be dozens of Android phones on the market, each set up for total openness of software and all other features. It could be the iPhone without Steve Jobs trying to control everything about it. It could be high-end, low-end, mid-end, side-end.

On the other hand, this is a year off. We’ll see the SDK next Monday. Then it will move from vaporware to reality. Can’t wait.