Articles about Android

It looks as though Motorola may be making it a little easier to buy the perfect smartphone. The Google company is taking mobile devices in something of a new direction, and all is revealed in a post on the Motorola blog. The company plans to do something new by developing "a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones" -- a click together phone, if you will.

So what's the idea? You know how you find the perfect phone but it has a camera that you just know you'll never use? You feel like you're paying for something unnecessary right? Or you find a phone you like but the battery doesn’t last quite long enough? Problems like this could become a thing of the past with Project Ara.

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Flat screens are so yesterday; curves are where it is at these days. Not content with constantly increasing the size of phone displays, handset manufacturers are now looking for a new twist. Both LG and Samsung have decided that curves are the way ahead. LG has officially announced the G Flex following on from the Galaxy Round that was revealed by Samsung just a few weeks ago, but it is the Samsung handset that is highlighted in a new ad.

As the Galaxy Round is destined for the Korean market, it should come as no surprise that the commercial is in Korean. This matters little as the looks of the phone speak for themselves. The advertisement demonstrates various curved objects that sit neatly in the hand to highlight that a great design decision has been made. Oddly, most of the objects shown -- an egg, a hand, a lemon, a glass -- are convex in curvature, so it's not really a direct comparison with how the handset will sit in the palm.

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When Samsung announced the Galaxy Round, the company's first smartphone with a curved display, many folks (myself included) struggled to see the real-life benefit that such a form factor would allegedly bring. The natural direction for the curve is considered to be on the long side, and not on the short one as the Galaxy Round has it. The rather gimmicky Roll Effect feature, that shows users some information when tilting the device, did not add more credibility to the touted benefits of the Galaxy Round either.

Rival Android maker LG has also announced its first smartphone with a curved display, that is called G Flex. The company markets it as the "world's first 'real' curved smartphone", in a (clever) attempt to take advantage of the negative feedback that the Galaxy Round has received so far.

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I will admit to being intrigued by BBM. I have never owned a BlackBerry smartphone (nor do I have plans to buy one) so I have never had the chance to find out what all the fuss is about. But, after the Canadian maker revealed that the service will also arrive on Android and iPhone, my interest piqued.

And I am definitely not the only one who is interested. Following the second release on rival platforms, in its first 24 hours on Apple App Store and Google Play BBM surpassed 10 million downloads, which is impressive for a service that only had 60 million users before the second half of the year.

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BlackBerry has relaunched BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for Android and iOS, almost a month after its previous attempt was derailed by a leaked edition.

This time the company appears to be keeping more control over events, in particular by making some users wait for an official notification email before they can use the app.

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Malwarebytes products have been protecting PCs since 2008, but the company has now decided to broaden its horizons with the release of an Android app.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Mobile still has plenty in common with its PC cousin, of course. The app is effective, free, and very easy to use: just launch it, click Scan and watch as your apps are checked for malicious code (we found this generally takes less than two minutes).

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More and more business users are shunning a traditional desktop or laptop for tablets and smartphones. While tablets are great for consuming information, with the help of keyboard attachments, they are sufficient at creation too. However, tablets and smartphones are very personal devices; they are not optimized to handle a conference call for multiple users. Today, Logitech announces a product designed to solve this dilemma -- the Mobile Speakerphone P710e.

The company says, "with the Mobile Speakerphone, you can be more productive with hands-free access to your mobile device of choice and an integrated experience for video conferencing and conference calls. Whether you’re hosting your noon conference call using your mobile device in a hotel room or joining a call from a conference room in your local office with your PC, the Logitech Mobile Speakerphone is the ideal travel companion for the mobile employee or small business owner".

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With Android handsets and iPhones taking the lion's share of the smartphone market, Windows Phone is quite often overlooked by most consumers in their purchasing decisions. The popularity, or lack thereof, of devices running Microsoft's mobile OS likely plays an important part but it also detracts folks from getting the smartphone that may be right for them. Ask yourselves how many of your acquaintances have been in this position.

Many do not even take Windows Phone into consideration and the ones that do easily find a couple of reasons to dismiss the platform and jump on the Android or iPhone bandwagon. Yes, Windows Phone may not be the right answer for everyone but it might be for more people than naysayers think. And I have got 10 good reasons why consumers should give Windows Phone a chance.

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Combined shipments of devices -- PCs, tablets and mobile phones -- are set to reach 2.32 billion units in 2013 according to technology research specialists Gartner. This represents a 4.5 percent increase over last year, but much of the growth is driven by a shift to lower priced devices.

Traditional PCs are forecast to show an 11.2 percent decline, which drops to 8.4 percent when ultramobiles are included. Mobile phone shipments are forecast to grow 3.7 percent to around 1.8 billion units. It's tablets that are still the darling of the consumer though, shipments are expected to be up a whopping 42.7 percent this year reaching 184 million units.

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Mobile malware tends to make news on a regular basis, most notably targeting Android. As Microsoft has learned with Windows, being the market share leader also means presenting the biggest target.

Russian virus researchers at Dr. Web are releasing new research around the latest volley from cyber-criminals, this one being dubbed "Android.Spy.40.origin". The Trojan is currently only prevalent in the southeast Asian geographic area, specifically in South Korea, where it's spread by means of unwanted SMS messages containing a link to an APK file.

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This was another week in which Microsoft managed to steal the show, this time with the public release of Windows 8.1. Here at BetaNews we were fully prepared for the upgrade and showed off what's new. While we're generally impressed with the update, there's still a little room for improvement. Of course the Start menu (or lack thereof) is still a sticking point, but you can get this back. The operating system update was preceded by a raft of updates to Window's built in apps.

Windows 8.1 may be where it's at right now, but there are still plenty of people running Windows XP. Google announced that Chrome users on XP would be supported for a year after the OS is retired.

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Google has an operating system for the desktop and laptop form-factors called Chrome OS. However, the company also has the Android operating system, which is designed for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This prompts many pundits to posit "why not just have Chromebooks run Android, as that OS can run the Chrome browser, and much more". And you know what? They are kind of right.

Sadly though, those people are mostly wrong; bless their hearts. You see, less is more in this case, and a lack of local apps breeds out of-the-box web app thinking, which is good. However, despite this, a number of manufacturers have released Android laptops but none of them took the world by storm. Today, Lenovo hopes to change that and releases the A10 -- an Android laptop with a 10.1-inch screen.

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Google's Nexus 5 is a hotly anticipated handset, and over the past few weeks there have been numerous leaked images purporting to show what the device looks like.

Now it looks as though the speculation can come to an end after Google accidentally listed the device in the Play store, complete with pricing details. The temporary listing -- which has now been removed -- showed the 16GB model costing $349, and featured the tagline "capture the everyday and the epic in fresh new ways".

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Smartphones have become such a big part of many people's lives in recent times, allowing us to stay in touch with the Internet wherever we go, that occasions when you can't get a data network or Wi-Fi signal become extremely frustrating, it's almost like losing a limb.

French developer Altheia has an answer in the form of a new app for Android phones called Be-Bound which it claims can keep you in touch with the Web even if there's no 3G, 4G, Edge or Wi-Fi signal available.

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Microsoft's big release of the day may be Windows 8.1, but it doesn't end there. The desktop operating system may have stolen the headlines today, but Microsoft also recognizes the importance of mobile devices. The company is not only concerned with its own devices, realizing that Apple and Android still dominate the mobile arena. But this does not mean that mobile users do not need access to Windows PCs -- hence the release of Microsoft Remote Desktop for iOS and Android.

The prospect of running Windows on an Android or iOS device may be a little way off yet, but it can be achieved via remote access -- which has the handy side effects of making it possible to access files, apps and anything else that might be needed whilst away from your computer. There is no shortage of remote desktop apps in the App Store, but Microsoft's offering aims to keep things simple. As you would expect, this is an app -- free of course -- that can be used to control a Windows PC from an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Android device.

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