Monday, July 2, 2012

Android Phone Fans

Android Phone Fans

[Discussion] Would you mourn the loss of Mobile Flash?

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 11:12 AM PDT

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On Friday we learnt that Adobe would be withdrawing Flash from Google Play in mid-August, after which the only way to get it would be by purchasing certified devices or through other, unofficial means. While they will continue to support it in terms of security updates, it’s quite clear the end of mobile Flash is upon us.

A couple of years ago, when the iPad was launched, there was a huge furore regarding Apple’s decision to block Flash from the tablet. Flash support gave Android an advantage when it came to marketing for quite some time. However, to be completely honest with you, I’m glad to see the end of mobile Flash. And I hope we don’t have Flash for much longer on PCs, either.

The reason is that I find Flash to be extremely resource hungry, and I try to keep it disabled on my laptop. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to currently spend significant amount of time on the web without it. I end up turning it back on, and quite often I end up frying my thighs. Today was, in a sense, the last straw. The Flash plug-in had gone crazy and as I kept scouring the internet for news to bring to you guys, it made a simple task of switching between tabs almost impossible. Once I disabled it, everything ran as smooth as one could desire.

I don’t mean to say I hate Adobe. They’ve been making some good moves as they strategize for the long term. I had spent time developing with PhoneGap prior to the acquisition, and I prefer to see them offer that as a platform to develop apps across various systems as opposed to AIR or Flash. Also, I’m really impressed with their new web-development IDE, Brackets, that I now use on a daily basis instead of Dreamweaver.

TL;DR: I’m glad to see the back of mobile Flash, and I hope to soon see the end of Flash in its entirety. What do you guys think?

Jelly Bean ported to international HTC One X

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 08:51 AM PDT

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Developers never cease to amaze us, do they? Unbelievably, a Senior Member over at XDA has already managed to pull together a working Jelly Bean ROM for the international HTC One X, just ONE DAY after the latest Android version was announced at Google I/O.

As expected, there are issues and the ROM is by no means a daily driver. But, if you’re the tinkering kind, you probably are going to flash this, right?

Also, here’s a little video for those who want to have a look.

[via XDA-Developers]

PSA: if you sync contacts with Facebook, then you might be sending E-Mails to the @facebook.com address

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 08:15 AM PDT

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You might have heard a certain piece of news earlier this week that Facebook had controversially decided to set every user’s <username>@facebook.com E-Mail address in the contact information. As if that wasn’t infuriating enough, users of the Facebook app on pre-ICS devices have something bigger to bother about.

It turns out that the @facebook E-Mail addresses have been pushed to the contact info on all mobile devices, too, which means that the default E-Mail address on your phone of your friends might not be the one you tend to send mails to. Unfortunately, at this point, all you can do is change your own settings on Facebook, and pay attention while composing on your mobile device. As CNET reports, quite a few people have already reported their address books having been altered and E-Mails having been lost (they didn’t make it to the recipients Facebook messages either).

Facebook has got to really answer for this mess. It’s one thing to change a user’s default E-Mail on their own site (which itself shouldn’t happen, since we’ve explicitly set it to something else), and quite another to alter the address books of millions of people. Fortunately for those on ICS, the app doesn’t sync contacts yet on the platform.

[via CNET]

#BoycottApple trending on Google+

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 07:31 AM PDT

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After the courts granted a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, there’s no denying that Phandroids the world over are MAD. And they’ve done an excellent job taking their fury out by getting #BoycottApple to trend on Google+. The content is flowing through quite fast, and it’s certainly fun just glancing over and seeing the posts.

It’s no Arab Spring, and I don’t expect to see this cause a dent in Apple’s earnings, but it’s good to see people vent their fury regarding Apple’s non-competitive behavior. Hopefully the attention would lead to something constructive, like the earlier Apple vs Motorola case.

Disclaimer: This post was written on a Macbook Pro, which I use for my work. But, before you call me a traitor, I must point out that the first thing I did when I got the laptop was add the stickers in the photo below to make it clear where my loyalties lie.
Posted by at 7:45 AM

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