Articles about Android

Following extensive leaks earlier in September, T-Mobile and HTC finally made an official announcement that provides the launch date and price for the HTC Amaze 4G, T-Mobile's latest HTC exclusive.

Going up for pre-sale on October 10th, and for regular retail on October 12th, the Amaze 4G will cost $259 after a $50 rebate and new two-year service contract with T-Mobile. Though it's a somewhat steep price; the power and feature set somewhat justify the expense.

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It was  only last week the iPhone version of Facebook was updated; the Android app followed suit this week. The Android app is not quite as fully featured as the iOS version, but the update brings a number of important improvements that bring it in line with the features of the Facebook website.

The big news here is the mirroring of the privacy controls that can be found on the Facebook website. When making a post, it is now possible to choose its visibility and choose whether location data should be attached to it. The same options are available when tagging images and sharing content online.

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Android's recent success in the tablet market seems to have hit a minor roadblock, as increased competition from RIM's PlayBook and now HP's fire-saled TouchPad chip away at its slice of the pie. Apple seems unaffected for the time being, with its market share increasing quarter-to-quarter.

Apple took a 68.3 percent share in the second quarter, up about 3 percent from the previous period, according to research firm IDC. Android tablet share on the other hand dropped significantly, falling to 26.8 percent from 34 percent in the first quarter.

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Intel and Google jointly announced on Tuesday that future versions of Android will offer support for Intel's Atom mobile processor family, meaning Android will finally make the jump from being ARM-exclusive, to also supporting x86.

The x86 instruction set has historically been used only in computers that run desktop operating systems, and the reduced instruction set ARM has been used in devices that run mobile operating systems.

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The Philadelphia Media Network, parent company of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, on Monday officially announced its program to subsidize Android tablets for newspaper subscribers.

The program first came to light two months ago, when Philadelphia Media Network said it expected to begin a pilot program in August, where it distributed 2,000 Android tablets at a discounted price with each $2.99 weekly subscription to its publications.

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Verizon Wireless and Motorola Mobility on Wednesday announced the Droid Bionic will go on sale nationwide on September 8. It will be Verizon's thinnest LTE smartphone, and the second Motorola smartphone (after the Atrix 4G) to utilize a Lapdock and Firefox 4-based Webtop environment on top of Android.

Who could forget the Motorola Atrix 4G, right? That Android smartphone that could fit into a notebook dock or an HDMI dock and turn into either a netbook computer or a set-top box?

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Last March, I said low-end Android handsets had already begun their market takeover, and cited a half dozen companies that had released, or were planning on releasing mass market Android smartphones in 2011 and 2012.

One of the companies I mentioned, Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei, had just released the Ideos X3, which had a consumer-friendly unsubsidized price of $199, falling in line with the company's tradition of releasing cheaper mass market handsets and modems.

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As it stands right now, there are no fewer than 50 different Android tablets on the international market, many from competitors you've probably never heard of unless you regularly shop in Chinese electronics shops, so differentiation is of crucial importance.

At IFA 2011 in Berlin this week, quite a few new Android tablets were either announced or launched, and each of the top-tier manufacturers who debuted a new product seemed to have homed in on a specific quality that they've improved over previous generations or over their competitors.

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In what is likely an effort to stave off any further erosion in market share, RIM is said to be planning to add Android app capability to phones running its new QNX software, according to those close to the company.

The first QNX phones are expected in 2012: RIM's PlayBook was the first to ship with the operating system in April of this year. Adding Android support to QNX-based phones should not be surprising: there is already support in the PlayBook for Android apps.

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In August, US LCD TV leader Vizio launched its 8" Android tablet for an agreeable $299 at most common big box retailers. Today, streaming TV provider Hulu announced it has partnered with Vizio to bring Hulu Plus to its new tablet.

Though Hulu Plus is available on many platfoms --video game consoles, TVs, connected media players, set-top boxes, and iOS devices-- it is only available on a dozen Android devices, and until today it was only on select Android smartphones.

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Security researchers and software companies have been warning of the shift to mobile-borne malware for years, and Android seems to be the primary platform of concern.

Over the last two years, we've witnessed the arrival of Android anti-malware applications from Symantec, McAfee, AVG, Softwin (BitDefender), ESET, F-Secure, and Lookout Security, and each time a new product is released, a new warning of the potential destruction a mobile virus, trojan, or botnet has is released.

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Lenovo said Tuesday it would begin accepting preorders for its
business-centric ThinkPad Tablet. The Android-powered portable begins shipping within a week and will start at $499 for the 16GB model.

The Chinese computer maker aims to market the ThinkPad Tablet to the business sector. It had previously announced the IdeaPad K1 -- its tablet for consumers -- and that device has been on sale in China since March.

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It has been a busy few days for Evernote recently. Less than a week ago the company acquired the Mac application Skitch, and this was quickly followed by a big update to the Evernote iOS app. Just as the main Evernote notetaking app is available on a range of platforms, so Skitch is available not only for Mac but also for Android, making it possible to add annotations and doodles to the photos you take.

Skitch enables you to use a number of text and drawing tools to add information to photographs you have taken. This could take the form of useful notes about a snap you took on holiday, such as the name of a restaurant or attraction you liked, or it could be notes to help someone else understand what is visible in an image.

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Today, In-Stat predicted that the global tablet market will reach 250 million shipments by 2017. It's a seemingly big number, but its real significance is bigger: How much will tablets displace PC sales?

Right now the global install base of PCs is about 1 billion units. Shipments have been above 300 million PCs per year, but they're way down in mature markets, still strong in some emerging markets and losing sales to tablets, according to both Gartner and IDC. Is there market sustainable enough for 300 million PCs and 250 million tablets? I'm the wrong person to answer, having already proclaimed -- to the chagrin of many Betanews commenters -- that the "PC era is over."

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According to market research company NPD Group, the sale of Android-based handsets grew 29% in the second quarter of this year, bringing the operating system to a 52% share of the US market. Contributing to this growth were South Korean manufacturers Samsung and LG, which both experienced "substantial gains."

But while Samsung and LG were improving their Android sales, Motorola Mobility fell dramatically.

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