Articles about Android

Malware on Android devices is a real and growing threat, and one that is only likely to worsen. The latest Trojan to be found in the wild is a particularly nasty piece of coding named MMarketPay.A by TrustGo, the mobile security company that discovered it. Believed to have infected more than 100,000 smartphones in China, the Trojan downloads paid apps and videos from Mobile Market (M-Market), China Mobile’s official app store, without the user’s knowledge, resulting in some pretty hefty bills.

The malware is picked up by downloading infected apps from one of nine app stores (nDuoa, GFan, AppChina, LIQU, ANFONE, Soft.3g.cn, TalkPhone, 159.com and AZ4SD) and once installed on a device, it bypasses M-Market’s SMS security step, and begins placing orders and downloading content.

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One thing that I can’t seem to get to grips with: The way manufacturers think we all have the hands of a basketball player. I’m not joking, as I’m not there yet. Look at all the new smartphones -- they are all bigger than before. It begs the question: when is enough enough?

I’m going to say it now, so I can get it over with: I don’t like big phones. I’m a guy, and I love a great display as much as the next person. But I can’t seem to love big phones. To me, a smartphone should work as a phone in the first place and as a smartphone second. I do make plenty of calls each day, and I place much value on the size of the device; it needs to fit comfortably in my pocket.

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HTC is one of the most important players in the Android world, delivering some of the best smartphones on the market today. In order to improve, HTC UK chief Phil Robertson said that for 2012 they will change their strategy to release only high-quality handsets rather than focus on a high number of devices. That sounded like a great idea at the time and one that was also reinforced by the CEO, Peter Chou. But does it match HTC's recent financial results?

HTC has seen rather disappointing financial results for the second quarter of 2012, the company posting a net income, after taxes of T$7.4 billion ($247.7 million). The profits increased by 65.5 percent over the previous quarter, up from T$4.47 billion ($149 million). Revenues were up as well from the first to the second quarter, from T$67.79 billion ($2.26 billion) to T$91.0 ($3.04 billion), a 34.2 percent increase.

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A couple of days ago Microsoft researcher Terry Zink claimed he’d uncovered evidence of Android phones being used as part of a botnet to send spam from Yahoo Mail servers. In his blog post on July 3rd he reported that the spam, which included "androidMobile" in the message header, and "Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android" at the bottom of the emails, was being sent from devices located in Chile, Indonesia, Lebanon, Oman, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela. He then went on to speculate that users of the infected phones might have installed Trojanized pirated versions of legitimate apps, and become infected that way.

Security experts Sophos, agreed with his findings after running investigations of its own on the spam messages, but didn’t actually find or test any of the supposed malware itself. Google has since denied that any Android devices have been compromised in this way, stating there was no evidence to prove Zink’s claim, and that the junk messages had just been formatted to look as if they originated on Android handsets.

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French consumer electronics company Archos on Thursday unveiled the first product in its upcoming "Elements" line of Android tablets, the Archos 97 Carbon.

Archos took its expertise in media and entertainment products and defly applied it to Android tablets three years ago. The result has been a series of enthusiast-level tablets with some totally unique and attractive features. For example, the Archos Stick was a removable USB modem built into the back of the company's Android tablets which could be popped out and used in a PC when it wasn't being used for the tablet's data connection.

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Since December 1998, when on impulse I bought the original iMac from CompUSA, I've used Apple gear. No longer. Late yesterday, I replaced the last fruit-logo with another, fulfilling my pledge nearly a month ago to boycott Apple. I wanted to declare independence sooner, but with so much news to write about in June and Google I/O last week, researching and replacing the AirPort base station was too much trouble. But it's offline now -- and, along with Apple TV, going on Craigslist today.

Circumstances since choosing to boycott make me all the more adamant. Last week, US District Judge Lucy Koh issued two preliminary injunctions against Samsung devices -- Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Nexus. Yesterday she denied Samsung's request to stay the ban pending appeal. Anticipating Nexus' similar fate, Google swiftly responded by pulling the phone from its online store and dispatching an update to existing phones. I chose to boycott being so angry by Apple's aggressive patent bullying that thwarts competition and takes away consumer choice. Today, I celebrate America's independence anniversary by gaining freedom from Apple.

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Let me see if I understand this. Google, the company that perfected web search and through it changed the lives of billions of people, must disable the local functonality from its flagship smartphone -- all because of Apple? Now do you see why about a month ago I boycotted Apple and last week called the preliminary injunction against Galaxy Nexus shameful?

Watch out. This is one Android update you don't want to accept. I asked my wife this morning: "Do you use local search on your phone?" She has Galaxy Nexus. My lovely looked up with a startled WTF looked and answered: "Yeah". Of course she uses local search on her phone. Who doesn't? You. If you own Galaxy Nexus and accept the update. It's the wrong one for Google to send out. The search giant should dispatch Android 4.1, which if, I understand correctly, changes search so that Apple's bully patent doesn't apply. C`mon, Google, you can do better.

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Last week, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced a certification program that assures devices will be able to seamlessly hand off their mobile data connection to a Wi-Fi connection and vice-versa. This program is called Wi-Fi certified Passpoint, and it was defined by service providers who desperately need a way to ease traffic on their congested mobile broadband networks. With devices that can automatically pair and connect over Wi-Fi, mobile networks can spare themselves some traffic.

The first devices certified in the the Passpoint test bed included: Access points from BelAir, Broadcom, Cisco, Ruckus Wireless, XSpan, and Qualcomm, as well as chips from Intel and Marvell. Included in the announcement last week was MediaTek's Hotspot 2.0 Client V1, which today the company said is the first (and only) smartphone system-on-a-chip to be involved in the project, and it's for mid- and entry-level dual-SIM Android devices.

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VideoLAN’s VLC, the hugely popular open source cross-platform media player, has finally been released for Android. Before you get too excited though, this is a beta version ported from iOS, so will only run on devices with an ARMv7 CPU and NEON. It has a rather basic UI and some performance issues too. In fact, according to VLC, "It might kill your kitten, destroy your house and start the Mayan apocalypse. Use it at your own risk".

If the limitations don’t put you off, and you have no qualms about potentially initiating the end of the world, the app offers the ability to play most local audio and video files (stored in its media library or any folders on your device), as well as network streams. It supports auto-rotation, aspect ratio adjustments, volume gestures, multi-track audio and subtitles.

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Last week, Google introduced its first branded tablet during the I/O developer conference. You can preorder one now, for delivery in a few weeks: $199 (8GB) or $249 (16GB). Maybe you're wondering if you should get one. I'd like to help that decision-making process, having the privilege of using Nexus 7 since June 27.

Nexus 7 is the most important Android device released to date. The tablet represents a culmination of disparate product and cloud services development coming suddenly together -- hardware, Jelly Bean, Chrome, curated content, seamless sync and personal assistant Google Now, among others. The tablet is first and foremost for anyone living the Google lifestyle. If you use more than a handful of Google services, this device, or Galaxy Nexus, is for you. Well, with caveats. Those aside, if you don't want this tablet, you really should.

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Apple's ridiculous patent assault against Samsung finally hits Google, which suddenly looks genius for choosing Asus to manufacture the Nexus 7 tablet. On Friday, US District Judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary injunction against Galaxy Nexus, which is Google's flagship, stock Android smartphone. Days earlier she barred Galaxy Tab 10.1. For the preliminary injunction to go into effect, Apple must first put up $96 million.

What timing. To preview Android 4.1 Jellybean, the company gave one to each of more than 5,000 developers during Google I/O earlier this week. The new OS releases to Motorola XOOM tablets and Galaxy Nexus in mid-July, making the smartphone the first to get the important upgrade. The preliminary injunction would somewhat stymie Jellybean distribution ahead of iO6, which Apple is months from releasing. New features include voice response, that in BetaNews testing smoke Apple's Siri. If you're thinking about buying Galaxy Nexus, don't wait!

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From the halls of Adobe come the bells of impending death tolls. The master slayed its dragon. Flash is dead. The words from Adobe today in a public blog post mark another major blow to Flash, at least in the mobile form. The company announced that it will no longer develop Flash for Android after Android 4.0. There will be no certified implementations for Android 4.1.

Earlier this week, during its developer conference, Google officially unveiled the newest Android version -- Jellybean -- which replaces the stock browser with Chrome, for which Flash already isn't available. Google released Chrome for Android beta, supporting on v4 Ice Cream Sandwich, in February. From that perspective, the announcement, and timing, isn't super surprising.

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That's really my question for iPad and iPhone users. Today Google released Chrome for iOS. Will you dump Safari for Chrome? I would. But can't. I boycotted Apple earlier this month because of its patent bullying, which later succeeded in blocking Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 imports. What madness!

In May, I claimed that I would use iPad if Chrome was available. Well, the browser is here and I won't, mainly because of the boycott. But also because I'm mad. To receive holy admittance into the Apple App Store shrine, Google sacrificed a lamb and prostrated before the great iOS idol. Chrome and Safari may both be based on WebKit, but Google's browser actually uses a different rendering engine. Well, not on iOS.

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Yesterday at Google I/O, Recon Instruments announced the HUD SDK. I couldn't get time at the booth until today, they were so busy. Recon is best known for its goggle mods, which put an Android computer inside a heads up display that provides alpine skiers and snowboarder with all kinds of useful information such as speed, navigation and location, among others. Oh, yeah, music, too.

The development kit turns the device into a platform. Now third parties can write their own apps -- it's no longer a Recon affair. Tyson Miller explains what the SDK means for the company, its customers, developers and future products.

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By now, we've all seen the Nexus 7 tablet, Google's first attempt to penetrate the tablet market directly. For $199, the Nexus 7 will be a huge hit among tablet fans worldwide. It will be directly supported by Google, which means updates will actually be released on time. That is a major advantage over any other Android tablet currently on the market, and will remain an advantage over future ones as well. Google is known to deliver a consistent "stock" Android experience, which is what most cutting-edge tech fans love.

But what about the next Google Nexus phone? It’s totally overshadowed by the tablet right now, so it's a perfect time to think about what's next for the Nexus brand.

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