Articles about Android

Motorola Mobility on Wednesday afternoon unveiled three new devices in its Droid Razr family of Android smartphones: the Droid Razr HD, Droid Razr Maxx HD, and Droid Razr M. With these new devices, Motorola continues the very straightforward approach to Android devices began early this year: offer physically skinnier devices with better battery life.

The Droid Razr HD has a 4.7" Super AMOLED display, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor with 1GB of RAM, Verizon 4G LTE/3G WCDMA connectivity, an 8 megapixel camera and 1.3 megapixel forward-facing chat cam, 12GB of onboard storage and a 2530 mAh battery.

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For the three months ending in July, Android and iOS combined US smartphone subscriber share reached 85.6 percent, according to comScore. That's 3.4 percentage points higher than April. Meanwhile, Research in Motion and Microsoft mobile platforms receded to 9.5 percent and 3.6 percent share from 11.6 percent and 4 percent, respectively. While comScore combines defunct Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, we henceforth refer to both using the latter name.

The smartphone market clearly consolidates around Android and iOS, leaving even less share for Windows Phone or BlackBerry. Android and iOS will soon face the new batch of Windows Phone 8 handsets, including the Nokia Lumia 920 announced today. However, as it stands now, Microsoft's mobile operating system has plenty of ground to cover to even count as a worthy adversary to the two major platforms.

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The Sony Xperia S smartphone comes with Sony's Timescape UX by default. Now, Sony has pledged to support a third-party project to port "stock" Android to the device.

In August, Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Technical Lead Jean-Baptiste Queru started a new experiment to port the vanilla version of Android to the Sony Xperia S, Sony's first post-Ericsson smartphone. Yesterday, the Japanese smartphone manufacturer announced its support for Queru's experiment by publishing the binaries for the Xperia S via the Sony Developer page.

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Samsung's recently-announced Windows Phone 8 smartphone, the ATIV is oozing with power and modernity, and that is what the Windows Phone software needs to finally become a dominant platform.

A platform needs flagship devices --smartphones and tablets-- to showcase what it can do in front of (possibly) billions of people, and hardware-wise it doesn't get any better than Android and iOS devices displaying their inner strength, their performance. Android takes first place and iOS second in the smartphone charts, and they have halo devices to represent them. Windows Phone, meanwhile, has been a mere shadow behind the two flexing their muscles. The Samsung Galaxy S III best represents Android as much as the iPhone 4S best represents iOS, but what does Windows Phone 7.5 have to show? A single-core CPU with 512MB of RAM and a GPU that was news a few years ago? That doesn't cut it...

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Two months ago my colleague Patrick Roanhouse wrote "ADOBE FLASH IS DEAD -- on mobile!" and that looked like the end of Flash Player on Android, but as it turns out it is not. According to the BBC, Adobe has brought back Flash Player on the Google Play UK. What made them change their mind?

Flash Player for Android's UK revival can be attributed to pressure placed by strategic local partners. BBC requested the San Jose, Calif.-based corporation to postpone axing Flash Player, since the underpinning of the organization's iPlayer is Flash. The interesting bit is that BBC has refused to comment on its request to bring back Flash to Google Play, but acknowledges working with Adobe on an alternative video player -- sure sounds like great timing to revive it until a new product replaces iPlayer.

Flash Player might not be dead now, but don't expect it to live for long. The software is no longer updated and once the "strategic partners" get up to speed with newer technology, it will vanish forever. That is, if there are no unforeseeable requests in the future.

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If you loved the original Galaxy Note, you're going to love this even more -- Samsung's new Galaxy Note II, which was announced at IFA in Germany today. It is packing even more processing power than the mighty Samsung Galaxy S III and it brings some beans along with it...

The Samsung Galaxy Note II will ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and Samsung's TouchWiz UX out of the box. A 5.5-inch 720p Super AMOLED display sporting a 1280x720 resolution dominates the front of the new smartphone. It is packing a 1.6 GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM. It comes with a 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera while on the back there is an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash. Bluetooth 4.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, MHL and NFC take care of connectivity with A-GPS and Glonass support added as well. The usual array of sensors including an accelerometer and digital compass are included along with a 3,100mAh battery that powers the device. It comes in 16/32/64GB versions while a microSD card slot will accommodate up to 64GB of additional storage.

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At IFA in Berlin, Germany on Wednesday, Sony Mobile Communications debuted its second generation Android-powered Tablet S, which Sony has now merged with its Xperia smartphone brand.

Sony's first generation of Android-based tablets offered extremely different designs from the whole crowd of first generation Android tablets, yet despite their unique appearance, they entered the market with a "thud" rather than a "boom." The wedge-shaped Tablet S was introduced at the same time as the much more interesting Tablet P, but the two devices entered the US market six months apart.

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CyanogenMod 9.1 and NFC payments -- curious already? The CyanogenMod team has announced a joint partnership with SimplyTapp to offer Near Field Communication payments for the Android modding community along with their latest custom ROM, CyanogenMod 9.1. The NFC app is named Tapp!, and it is offered as a separate download to the popular CM ROM.

SimplyTapp is founded by Doug and Ted, two "CM enthusiasts" that have contributed towards extending the NFC capabilities as well as to the development of CyanogenMod. So how does it work?

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In addition to releasing Firefox and Thunderbird 15 Tuesday, Mozilla also released a new version of Firefox for Android tablets running ICS and Honeycomb!

Last year, I put together a list of what I believed were the ten best apps for Android Honeycomb, and I included both the Dolphin Browser and Opera Mobile in the list. At the time, not even the Nightly build of Firefox was available for Honeycomb devices. That did not come until five months later, and it was still in a very early UI form.

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Well, Microsoft certainly took long enough. SkyDrive for Android is now available. I guess it takes nearly 65 percent mobile OS market share for the software giant to notice. Yeah, the wait is over. If you love Android but not Google Drive, or even Dropbox, Microsoft's cloud locker is your ticket.

There's real sense to this belated release. By market share, most everyone using a smartphone will have Android, while those on PCs most likely will have Windows (and likely Office, too). Windows 8 makes Microsoft Account the required identity, which also unlocks services like SkyDrive. But most mobile users will have Android or iOS, which combined mobile operating system sales share was 82.9 percent in second quarter, according to Gartner. Windows Mobile/Phone: 2.7 percent, or just behind Samsung's Bada. So likely lots more Windows 8 users with required Microsoft Account will have Android or iOS than Windows Phone. Hey, late is better than never, right?

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I can't win. Just when I think I've finally cooked-up the perfect post-PC computing recipe, along comes some killjoy to spoil all the fun. This time around it's Apple. The Cupertino goon squad is on a mission to stomp out all unauthorized uses of lowercase letter "i" (among other things), and my latest pet project -- moving my entire computing life to a non-PC device -- is about to fall victim to their litigious ways.

You see, I made the unforgivable decision to deviate from Apple's proscribed post-PC formula (i.e. iPhone/iPad) and instead embrace the ways of the rebel Android Army. After several weeks of tweaking and tuning, I've finally achieved a level of PC-independence I never thought possible. But given last week's Apple-Samsung jury decision, I fear it may have all been for naught. That's because the reverberations from such a landmark case will no doubt spread far beyond its principle defendant (you didn't really think this was about hardware, did you?) to strike at the very heart of Google's OS strategy.

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After Qualcomm spilled the beans, LG officially announced the Optimus G, the world's first quad-core smartphone based on the Snapdragon S4 Pro processor to also include LTE connectivity. The LG Optimus G will be rolled out in September in Korea with global availability to follow after. Look out Samsung Galaxy S III, there is a new flagship smartphone in town...

The LG Optimus G has a 4.7-inch TrueHD IPS display (LCD) that sports an unusual 1280x768 resolution with a 15:9 ratio, packing a fast Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with a quad-core 1.5GHz Krait CPU, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 13 megapixel rear-facing camera with a 1.3 megapixel camera available on the front, 4G LTE connectivity, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, MHL, DLNA, NFC and Bluetooth 4.0. The device weighs 145 grams and measures 131.9 x 68.9 x 8.45mm. A 2,100mAh battery is powering the LG Optimus G that is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

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The rumors about a new LG quad-core phone are true. Qualcomm confirms the South Korean manufacturer is currently baking an LTE smartphone based on the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset. We've seen the chipset in the fastest and most expensive Android tablet around, giving LG's smartphone the right credentials for speed.

LG's new quad-core LTE smartphone is anticipated to be released in September, followed by global availability. Because of the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset it has the makings of a smartphone speed champion, being powered by a quad-core Krait Snapdragon S4 CPU and Adreno 320GPU, a combination that has given Qualcomm's Mobile Development Platform (MDP) the title of fastest Android tablet on the market.

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Did you know that updating Facebook while driving can cause lane veering by up to one meter, or that texting adds 8.5m to the overall stopping distance when travelling at 70mph? Well, it’s true according to a new study by Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) on behalf of insurance company esure. The report also says that 1 in 5 drivers took their eyes off the road for 7 seconds when they heard a ringing phone. Check out the fancy PDF infographic if you want to find out more.

To help remove these distractions (and reduce the number of claims it has to process, presumably), esure has produced a free Android app which eliminates mobile phone distractions. The DriveOFF app, available through Google Play, uses GPS to detect when your car is in motion and travelling above 10mph and automatically turns off all other apps and blocks incoming calls and texts.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice Intellectual Property Task Force announced on Tuesday that they had for the first time shut down third-party Android app stores for piracy: applanet.net, appbucket.net, and snappzmarket.com. The three domains are now in the custody of the U.S. government and in their places are FBI shutdown notices.

In the last twelve months, the FBI has seized hundreds of domains related to various illicit activities, including "carding" (selling stolen credit card information), the sale of counterfeit merchandise, wire and bank fraud via botnet, and, in the case of Megaupload organized crime.

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