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Amazon Fire Takes Android, Leaves Google Apps Bloomberg Enlarge image Amazon Fire Takes Android Amazon Fire Takes Android Denis Doyle/Bloomberg Android mobile operating system at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Enlarge image Amazon Fire Takes Android, Leaves Google Apps Amazon Fire Takes Android, ... See all stories on this topic » Bloomberg

An Android-aping iPad 3 would be utter rubbish TechRadar UK I'm one of those people that finds Android incredibly messy. That's one of the reasons why I favour an iPhone over any Android handset – I've used Android phones before and the interface of each and every one has consistently annoyed me by either ... See all stories on this topic » TechRadar UK

Ice Cream Sandwich on Android tablets: A visual tour Computerworld (blog) By JR Raphael (@jr_raphael) We've heard all about how Google's Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, is changing the face of the Android phone. But what does the new software mean for the Android tablet? Ice Cream Sandwich, after all, ... See all stories on this topic »

iPhone 4S wooing lots of Android, BlackBerry users CNET A hefty 36 percent of iPhone 4S buyers said they jumped ship from an Android, BlackBerry, or Palm device, according to a study released yesterday by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). Specifically, 50 percent of the rival phone jumpers ... See all stories on this topic »

mSecure for Android is Now Available On the Nook Color and Nook Tablet San Francisco Chronicle (press release) mSecure Password Manager for Android is now available on the App Store for the Nook Color and Nook Tablet eBook products. mSecure is one of the leading password managers for both desktop and mobile devices, with the latest version supporting improved ... See all stories on this topic »

Bestsellers: Android's Paid Market Is Alive, But Skews To Techie Tweaks MocoNews But a glance at Android's app charts shows users will pay, and sometimes handsomely. The current top paid Android app costs $14/£9.45 and has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times in the last month, according to Android Market. See all stories on this topic »

Apple's "thermonuclear war" against Android is an expensive dud VentureBeat This morning Reuters reported that Apple had lost an appeal to ban Android tablets in the Netherlands. It's another failure for an expensive legal strategy that has done nothing to stem the growth of Android's marketshare in the smartphone and tablet ... See all stories on this topic »

Ingenious Med Expands Mobility with Android Sacramento Bee 24, 2012 -- /PRNewswire/ -- Ingenious Med, the leading platform for inpatient physician management and automated charge capture, announced its solution is now available on the Android Market for Android mobile devices. Ingenious Med's online and ... See all stories on this topic »

Lookout's Mobile Threat Tracker Shows Where All That Android Malware Is [VIDEO] Mashable If you've got an Android phone, you've probably been increasingly concerned about malware, which flared up a few times over the past year — even showing up in the official Android Market at one point. But just how bad is the problem? See all stories on this topic »

Blogs 5 new results for android

Chart: Android Is Catching Up To iOS In Mobile Video Views ... By Erick Schonfeld With 250 million Android devices out there, growing by more than 700000 activations a day, a lot of mobile video is watched on Android cell phones and tablets. It is not quite as much yet as on Apple iOS devices but it is catching up fast. TechCrunch

Android + Kinect + Projector = $&#%@^! [Video] - Phandroid By Chris Chavez Okay, so I wont even pretend to know what's going on here but I immediately wanted to dismiss it as some kind of dark arts or voodoo. Well, that or 21st century. Android Phone Fans

Dolphin Browser adds Evernote, Skitch functionality | Android ... By Michael Crider Dolphin Browser HD remains one of the most popular third-party browser alternatives for Android with over ten million downloads, and at least part of that is. Android Community

Sony ST25i 'Kumquat' Android smartphone possibly leaked By Todd Haselton Next month we're sure to hear about the latest smartphones from several of the world's largest phone makers during Mobile World Congress, however that. BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech

Android may finally surpass iOS for developers in 2012 | VentureBeat By Jolie O'Dell While Android has for sometime been outpacing iOS on the consumer side in terms of growth and market share, developers have still clung to iOS for building new apps. However, new research shows that 2012 might be the year that changes. VentureBeat

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Judge rejects Oracle's plan to speed Android trial

BOSTON - A judge on Friday shot down Oracle Corp.'s offer to put its Java patent-infringement claims against Google over the Android mobile OS on hold, in exchange for a speedier trial on its copyright claims.

Oracle sued Google in August 2010, claiming Android violated a number of Java copyrights and patents. Google has denied wrongdoing, saying Android uses a "clean-room" implementation of Java that doesn't infringe on Oracle's intellectual property. 
Oracle earlier last week, seemingly eager to get the long-simmering case to trial as soon as possible. 

"The piecemeal approach suggested by Oracle as a trial alternative will not be adopted," Judge William Alsup said in the ruling filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. "The [court's schedule] simply does not permit that luxury. If Oracle wishes to voluntarily dismiss any damages claim, it will have to do so with prejudice; otherwise, a dismissal is nothing more than an invitation to piecemeal litigation."

One proposal within Oracle's alternative plan would have seen the company's patent claims dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could revive them at a later date. Under another proposed scenario, Alsup would "sever and stay" the patent claims for nine months.

The judge has previously ruled the trial would take place in up to three phases covering patent, copyright and damages issues, all heard by the same jury, and seems intent on preserving that plan.

Alsup has been assigned to a large-scale prosecution of alleged gang members, "which has resulted in four lengthy trials, including one underway now, without any relief from the remainder of his normal caseload," he wrote in Friday's ruling. "This has led to a backlog of trial-ready cases waiting their turn."

The judge recently said he won't set a trial date until Oracle [Nasdaq: ORCL] submits an acceptable damages methodology. In his ruling Friday, Alsup granted Oracle's expert the go-ahead to make a third try.

If all goes well, the case could "could still possibly be tried starting mid-April," but if not, it will probably slip until the last four months of this year, Alsup wrote. "This order, however, gives no assurances as to when the case can be tried."

In a filing late Wednesday, Google offered a lukewarm response to Oracle's proposed alternative trial plan, referring to it only in passing. "With respect to Oracle's extensive discussion of potential alternative trial plans, those same issues were briefed by the parties and decided by the Court just last week, and the Court did not ask the parties for further comment on those issues," the filing stated.

Google has previously argued that the case should be stayed pending a number of ongoing patent reexaminations by U.S. patent authorities, saying that the outcome could streamline the issues in dispute.


Source : http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/judge-rejects-oracles-plan-to-speed-android-trial/144728

Android Comodo Mobile Security and Antivirus app available

As most of the Android faithful would admit, the Android platform is susceptible to malware and viruses and there are several antivirus, anti-malware and other anti bad gear apps available on the Android Market, but now you can download the Comodo Mobile Security Free AV app to protect your Android device from all that nastiness.

According to the guys over at Android Police, the Comodo Mobile Security Free AV app for android first and foremost as one would expect the Comodo Android app is an antivirus/anti-malware; however the application does offer a subset of useful tools.

This subset of tools included privacy protection that enables the user to keep certain information like SMS and a specific contacts list confidential, a process/task manager, and an SMS/call blocking tool, which can be used to filter out unwanted texts and calls by way of a simple black and white list.

With the Comodo Mobile Security Free AV app virus protection is ‘always on’ and there is also an ‘on demand’ scanner so you can scan and keep your smartphone or tablet free from unsafe applications and viruses.

On a personal note I use Comodo Internet Security on my PC and have no problem with it, so perhaps the Comodo Mobile Security Free AV app offers the same for your mobile device. So if you wish to take advantage of Comodo for Android you can download the app for free from theAndroid Market.

If you have enjoyed this Phones Review article feel free to add me to your circles on Google+ and I will of course add you back.

Source : http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/01/23/android-comodo-mobile-security-and-antivirus-app-available/

Android and Windows Phone creep up on Apple iOS

The future is looking less than rosy for Apple's iOS mobile platform, if new research reports by analyst houses Ovum and IHS iSuppli are to be believed.

Ovum's second annual developer survey, released today, states that Android could replace iOS in terms of importance to developers within the next 12 months, and that momentum is growing behind BlackBerry OS and Microsoft's Windows Phone.

According to Adam Leach, devices and platforms practice leader at Ovum and author of the research, some developers are starting to focus their efforts on web-based standards such as HTML5, which can be used to build cross-platform applications. However most developers are still using vendor-specific distribution channels, such as the Android Market, to deploy applications.

“A smartphone platform’s success is dictated not only by the pull of consumers and the push of handset vendors and mobile operators but also by a healthy economy of applications delivered by third-party developers,” said Leach.

“Therefore, it is important for all players in the smartphone ecosystem to understand the choices developers are making today and the downstream impact of those choices.”

Meanwhile, a separate report published last week by supply chain analysts IHS iSuppli suggests that Microsoft's Windows Phone will overtake Apple's iOS by 2015, driven largely by “strong support” from Nokia.

IHS predicts that Windows Phone will reach 16.7 percent of market share in 2015, behind first-ranked Android at 58.1 percent and just slightly ahead of iOS at 16.6 percent. The analyst said the introduction of the Lumia 900 running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) at CES showed Microsoft's and Nokia's promise in smartphones.

Windows Phone made up only 1.9 percent of the market for all of 2011, according to IHS, with Apple's iOS at 18 percent and Android smartphones by all makers at 47.4 percent.

Source : http://news.techworld.com/mobile-wireless/3331895/android-windows-phone-creep-up-on-apple-ios/

US Android users prefer Samsung, says new study

Samsung’s almost literally on top of the world when it comes to mobile phone sales, and apparently that’s with good reason. Researcher iGR stated in its latest news release that among US Android buyers, Samsung was the most proffered brand, followed by Motorola and HTC. Among the top three, Samsung is the only brand with a positive outcome from the last quarter – while all are selling well, Samsung is far and away the most profitable at the moment, both in the US and abroad.

According to research from late last year, iGR estimates that 47 percent of United States smartphone owners use Android, compared to 24 percent which use an iPhone. (Note that the iPhone is now available on three out of four of the largest carriers in the country.) Among Android users, almost half researched their purchase beforehand and specifically chose an Android phone, and 27% of Android owners chose Android specifically because of its association with Google. From the study: ” …27 percent of Android users said that they selected an Android smartphone because they believed that Google was a ‘reputable company’ and therefore inferred that Android must also be reputable.”

With Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S line selling 30 million phones worldwide and an extremely wide range of price points available, Samsung seems to be winning the Android market with sheer force. HTC, LG and Motorola, the other three major Android OEMs, have product lines that are comparatively thin and spread out across multiple US carriers. Just as an example: among the Android Community writers at CES, four Samsung Galaxy Nexus and one Galaxy S II could be found, with an AT&T Galaxy S II Skyrocket as a backup. The only other Android phone brought was a Verizon LG Revolution, also a backup device. It’s fair to say that Samsung is kicking butt and taking names as far ass Android goes – but they shouldn’t be cocky. The same could be said of Motorola in the fall of 2009, and of HTC in mid 2010. Who knows who’ll end up on top as 2012 plays out.

Source: http://androidcommunity.com/us-android-users-prefer-samsung-says-new-study-20120123/

New RIM CEO squashes Android rumors for good, promises little change

You’d think that with a new chief executive in charge, BlackBerry maker RIM would be making some sweeping changes to revitalize its ailing smartphone business.

But, in a conference call new CEO Thorsten Heins held with the press this morning, he reiterated his position on sticking with RIM’s current strategy for the foreseeable future. The big takeaway, which will surely disappoint many Android fans, is that he outright refuses to break up RIM’s control of both its software and hardware.

“We are strong because we have an integrated solution… I want to build on that. I will not in any way split this up,” Heins said. He rightly pointed out that Apple, “the other fruit company,” is the only other mobile device maker to hold such control over its devices, and it makes sense for RIM to hold on to its integrated strengths for as long as possible.

But with RIM’s next-generation BlackBerry 10 OS and devices not appearing until the end of the year, it’s difficult for Heins to get us excited about the company’s integration prowess. Given the many delays RIM has had with its new operating system, which is based on technology from QNX, many figured the company would be better off pulling a Nokia (which dumped its software for Windows Phone) and jumping to Android. (VentureBeat’s editor-in-chief Matt Marshall calls RIM’s exec shuffle the “official triumph of software over hardware.”)

At this point though, it’s too late for RIM to make any such changes, and its stuck with its current game plan.

Heins mentioned that the company would be willing to license BlackBerry 10 to others, but he said that “it’s not my focus one.” Even if RIM manages to find some suckers licensees, it wouldn’t help the company’s larger problems with device market share.

Source : http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/23/new-rim-ceo-android/

Android stays ahead of iPhone surge in US (despite what Nielsen thinks)

Though the iPhone did incredibly well in the past three months in the US – getting nearly half of sales – Nielsen's claim that it's 'catching up' with Android isn't quite right. Other platforms, meanwhile, have trouble

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Nielsen's claim that the iPhone is 'catching up' with Android isn't quite right. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

"More US Consumers Choosing Smartphones as Apple Closes the Gap on Android" says the headline on the Nielsen blog, looking at sales of smartphone in the US over the fourth quarter.

Only one thing wrong about it: Apple isn't, by the numbers Nielsen provides, closing the gap in installed base on Android. Instead, the Android OS is extending its lead in smartphones – which, according to Nielsen, stands at 46.3% of the total market; Apple, it says, has 30% of the overall market.

US installed base (left) and market share in the past three months (right) of smartphone platforms. Source: Nielsen

The error arises in Nielsen's interpretation of its data, where it says that among recent acquirers of smartphones (that is, in the past three months), "44.5% of those surveyed in December said they chose aniPhone, compared to just 25.1% in October. Furthermore, 57% of new iPhone owners surveyed in December said they got an iPhone 4S."

Okay, fair enough. But its figures for acquirers of smartphones in the past three months shows that 37% of them got iPhones, and 51.7% of them got Android phones. (We'll come to the other platforms in a moment.)

That means, roughly, that for every 10 smartphones sold in those three months, four were iPhones and five were running Android. (Nielsen gives figures: 61.6% v 25.1% for Android/iOS in October, 48.7% v 38.8% in November, 46.9% v 44.5% in December.) At no point have iPhones been outselling the totality of Android phones – though in December they came within 2.4%, so nearly neck and neck.

US market shares over last three months of 2011 for Android, iOS and RIM. Source: Nielsen

The point being that you can't catch up with someone if you're running at nine-tenths the speed they are. The iPhone hasn't "closed the gap", except in the sense that nearly as many people were buying iPhones in December as they were Android phones.

However, until and unless iPhone sales overtake Android sales, the lead that Android – as a platform – enjoys in the US smartphone market is going to continue to grow.

We'll have to see what happens to the figures in January: it's faintly possible that Apple could overhaul all Android phones in sales, but I wouldn't bet the house on it.

The one wrinkle in all this of course is that Apple is just one company, where "Android" describes lots of companies - Samsung, HTC, and Motorola for example. Even with Samsung's growing power in the US (though HTC used to dominate Android sales there) it's unlikely to have taken a near-100% share of the Android market there. So Apple might have sold more smartphones than any other company in the US over those three months.

But as Stephen Elop of Nokia says, it's a war of ecosystems, not a battle of devices. Apple's chosen its ecosystem. And Android is the principal one it's up against right now.

And the first part of those wars may be over: Nielsen says that 46% of US mobile consumers now have a smartphone. (In the UK, the figure passed 50% around autumn 2011.) It seems a safe assumption that there will be a certain segment who will hold out against smartphones – which means there's probably less than 50% of the market to play for in the coming years.

Other platforms

• RIM's BlackBerry is having an appalling time in the US. The Nielsen data suggests that its existing installed base is 14.9% – but its share of the past three months' sales was 6%. Even worse, that fell continuously over the three months, from 7.7% to 6.4% to 4.5%. What makes this part of the story even worse is that this is with its new devices – the ones which came out (a little late) in the autumn, offering touch screens and all sorts of bells and whistles (though not Flash. Is that the problem? Nah, thought not.) The resignation last night of the two chief executives (who also resigned their co-chairmen roles) is indicative that they've finally realised they have A Problem.

For RIM, there doesn't seem to be a bottom to the market; there's a suspicion that its corporate customers are abandoning it (or not renewing contracts, which comes to the same thing). It is going to have to rely on the enthusiastic markets outside the US (which include the UK) to keep itself going while it hopes – it has to hope – that its new products based on QNX, due sometime late (in both senses) this year will revive its fortunes. So far, that hasn't happened, at least in its former biggest market.

• Windows Phone. Still not very visible, but expanding: Nielsen says it has 1.3% of installed based, and had 1.4% of sales in the past three months. In other words, growing. But this of course is all before Nokia's renewed assault on the market with the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile, and the Lumia 900 with LTE (and a 23% bigger battery) starting sales this year. Meanwhile Symbian, with 1.4% of the installed base, got 0.9% of sales – so it's fading (even more).

• Windows Mobile and Palm/WebOS. People are still buying these (2.4% – bigger than Windows Phone! – and 0.5% respectively). Proof that old mobile operating systems don't die until handset makers stop making them.

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/jan/23/android-ahead-iphone-us?newsfeed=true

Q&A: Android Design Chief Details Google’s Mobile Future

Android UX design chief Matias Duarte talks exclusively with Wired on design, competitors and the future of mobile.Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

By most measures, the Android platform is an enormous success. It dominates the smartphone space in terms of market share, with over a quarter of a billion currently activated devices. It’s on phones and tablets made by four of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. And its reach isn’t slowing.

But with enormous growth comes problems, many of which Google knows quite well. App stores. Competitors. That dirty word: “fragmentation.” All of this bogs down Android during a critical phase of its development, just a few years since its initial launch.

Android needs a hero — someone who can unify the platform and work on the many weaknesses that critics attack, and even supportive users grumble about. And Matias Duarte, Android’s head of user experience, wants to take that role.

Under Duarte, Android launched Ice Cream Sandwich — aka Android 4.0 — late last year. It’s the team’s strongest effort yet in offering a robust, well-designed operating system that can measure up to the likes of Apple’s and Microsoft’s OS platforms. And at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, Duarte launched the other half of the plan, the Android Design web site, which aims to make it easier for designers to create better, more user-friendly apps.

I sat down with Duarte at CES for an exclusive pre-launch interview, and picked his brain about Android, design in general, and competing operating systems like Windows Phone and webOS — the platform he architected for Palm years ago.

On Android Design

Wired: So tell me the philosophy behind launching the Android Design developer site. Is it specifically for what users are going to see in the interface, or is this more engineering focused?

Matias Duarte: It’s both what the user sees and how the application functions. Thus far, Android has had a lot of terrific developer API-level documentation. But we haven’t really had a style guide, we haven’t had interaction guidelines.

We haven’t, for example, given you a lot of guidance on how to migrate your application from a phone perhaps to a tablet. We’ve done so only by example, by showing you the way all the apps function in Ice Cream Sandwich. So we want to just kind of open up our studio’s doors, if you will. We want to show you how we think, and how we designed Ice Cream Sandwich to work. What all its principals and its rules and its conventions are so you don’t have to try and discover that yourself.

Wired: Is this a response to feedback you’ve been getting from the Android community?

Duarte: This is something that developers and designers are really hungry for. For any platform, it’s really important to understand what its conventions and patterns are. And so this is our chance — now that we’ve finished running the marathon to get the product out the door — to show them how they too can make apps that look and work as simply and as beautifully as the apps that we’ve made for Ice Cream Sandwich.

Wired: You know what this strikes me as? Like my Bible, the AP Style Guide, only for developers.

Duarte: That’s exactly what it is. There’s a lot of generally agreed-upon good interaction design practices, as well as universal mobile interaction practices. Still, every operating system does things a little differently, has its own conventions. The frameworks are different.

Wired: So does this mean — “rules?” There’s direction, and then there’s mandate.

Duarte: Well, it’s a slightly different situation because we don’t have an editor who’s going to yell at you if you’re out of line. In computer ecosystems, the public decides how successful applications will be after they hit the market. So within our style guide we have certain things that we think are absolutely how one should make an Android app. But there are other variables — examples in which code is good in some cases and bad in others. There it’s left up to you to make a judgment call as to which pattern you should adopt. There, we don’t have a hard and fast rule. But in either case, there’s nothing that we do to enforce that.

The new UI of Ice Cream Sandwich. Photo: Mike Isaac/Wired.com

On Tablets vs. Smartphones

Wired: I’m thinking of tablets versus smartphones specifically, and where Ice Cream Sandwich fits in. Is this going to help bridge that gap? This is something that — in terms of tablets — people have wanted for a long time.

We have some portions of the guide that are specifically focused on that topic. How to design an app that takes advantage of the extra space on the tablet. How to design an app that will adapt and use a different type of user interface when it recognizes on a screen that is appropriately phone-size, and on a screen that’s tablet size.

So what we’ve launched — it’s not a document, it’s not a book, it’s a site. It’s a destination where we continuously add more detail to some of the documentation that we have, and some of it is very nitty-gritty.

To be honest, some of the most valuable content is in our design patterns. It’s our thinking that goes into certain conventions, or paradigms, practices. And in these we’ve started with a set of some of what we think are the most important or new patterns that we’ve introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich.

Wired: Do you expect this to bolster tablet apps in general?

Duarte: I think it should help tablet apps. Honestly, again, it wasn’t a particular goal of ours to focus on tablet apps because we don’t really think of tablet apps internally. But I think there’s no doubt that several sections of the guide do focus on some of the problems unique to larger screens, and so by nature that will help tablet apps.

Source : http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/01/android-design-matias-duarte-2/