Of Androids and Apples Washington Post Android works the other way. It says "yes" to everything, but rare is the app that shows the polish of the best-in-breed iOS app. Out of the box, my Android had two e-mail clients: one e-mail client and a Gmail client. But neither works as nicely as their iOS ... See all stories on this topic »
Tips for deduping Android contacts CNET Tips for deduping Android contacts. If your Android phone's address book is filled with duplicate or useless contacts, here are some tips on deduping, merging, and trimming contacts into a useful list. Donald Bell. by Donald Bell. July 28, 2012 9:18 AM PDT ... See all stories on this topic »
iOS, Android Developer Gap Is Shrinking: Report eWeek For the last several years, Apple's iOS mobile operating system has been getting most of the attention from software developers every time a new version comes out, in comparison with new releases of Google's competing Android OS. But something ... See all stories on this topic »
OnLive Games Coming to Ouya Android Console PC Magazine Ouya, the Android-based gaming console that has secured more than $5 million in funding from Kickstarter, has a new partner: online gaming firm OnLive. "We are pleased to announce that OnLive will be available on Ouya at launch, extending and building ... See all stories on this topic »
T-Mobile myTouch and myTouch Q hands-on ... - Android Community By Cory Gunther Today we have our hands-on the newest editions to T-Mobile's growing smartphone lineup. What we have here are two brand new Huawei smartphones but branded as. Android Community
The Most Common Words in Android and iOS App Names By Casey Chan If you ever searched for an app on the App Store or Google Play, you would see an endless list of crappy apps with similar names just tagged as HD or LITE or FREE or PRO. Everybody wants to call their app the same damn thing! Here are ... Gizmodo
Motorola Android devices banned in Germany after losing patent ... By Raveesh Bhalla Yet another day, yet another bit of patent-related lawsuit news. And, unfortunately, this time an Android OEM is on the wrong side of the judgement. A Mannheim court has ruled that Motorola infringes on Microsoft's patents on FAT technology. Android Phone Fans
In a future article, we will go over the inherent beauty of the Google Fiber Internet plan and its forecasted undermining of the monolithic structure that is US ISP’s. In this edition, we will briefly cover one of the services the plan serves to meet, and its a large segment of the market: HDTV.
Broadband TV is not a new concept, with HDTV, DVR, and the now defunct TiVO, being used for the 1st generation of Internet based streaming video. Households now have the option to watch and record, just about anything they can lay their eyes on. Google intends to meet this market heads on and give people a deal they cannot refuse. With a seemingly no-brainer to have Google’s infrastructure piped into own’s home, they follow up with a no-fuss tiered choice system:
Gigabit TV/Internet at $120/month
Gigabit Internet at $70/month
Free Internet w/ $300 construction fee
The first option is the item we should focus on here. It appears $120 will garner you a 2 year contract with a full channel lineup, and during that time, you’ll receive goodies like a Nexus 7 which will act as a remote TV. A few other mentionables are:
TV Box
Storage Box
Network Box
1TB Google Drive
optional Chromebook ($299)
Now hold on to your hats, because Google is announcing that it will have no data caps on any of its plans. This is strictly to complement the HD-Ready TV boxes it’s serving up, but it’s sure to make even the cheap customers happy. No monthly fees just to watch HDTV? Why thank you Google! If you’re excited about this, the city list is relegated right now to KC, Missouri/Kansas But preregistration is until September 9th so you have a little over a month to take part in what could be a real market-shaker as the network gets rolled out across the country.
Last night's Olympic Games opening ceremony was nothing less than dazzling. I was only able to watch parts of it, but from what I've seen and from the few videos that surfaced the web today, I can say it was the most spectacular opening that I have ever witnessed.
Apparently, among the moments I missed there was a product placement artistic moment prominently featuring one of Samsung's flagship devices, the Galaxy Note. According to a video released by Samsung this morning, 100 such devices were used during the opening ceremony.
The "behind the scenes" video shows Martin Green, Head of Ceremonies for the London Olympic Games using a Galaxy S3 and a Note to work. He says that the purpose of the Samsung choreography was to demonstrate "how quickly and easily the world can communicate". He goes on to use the Note's sketch app to… well, sketch something work-related, which seems a bit silly to me. Next two of the dancers involved in the event explain how they use Sammy's devices to find their way to London, and we also get a glimpse of the actual choreography, at the 1:30 mark.
Samsung is a major sponsor of the London games, and as you would expect, they wanted full exposure in return. The ceremony moment was just a small bit from Samsung's promotional blitz for the Olympics. Other elements that we covered are the special edition Team GB Galaxy S3, the Olympic-themed accessories, the tie-in with Holiday Inn, the commercials starring David Beckham, and the one below, which features Carmelo Anthony using the S Beam on his Galaxy S3 to light up the Olympic Torch.
Did you catch the Samsung choreography from last night? Do you like it or you think it’s too much?
The original Final Fantasy was published in December 1987 on the NES, at a time when it's lead creator, Square's Hironobu Sakaguchi, was about to give up on the game industry. It was success or bust. Fortunately, the title was a hit and went on to spawn an entire media franchise over the years, that currently includes 14 main titles and countless ports, spinoffs, anime series, and feature films.
Yesterday, Square Enix has quietly launched the legendary Final Fantasy to Android devices. The game follows Final Fantasy III, which made quite a splash a few weeks ago, when it was launched on Google Play for a hefty $15.99. The original Final Fantasy for Android is just $6.99, but I am sure that fans of the series will be more than happy to pay to emerge themselves once more in the FF universe.
Final Fantasy for Android is a remake of the 1987 game, rather than a straight port, meaning that it features revamped graphics instead of the 8-bit sprites of the original title. But the story and the gameplay remain unchanged, so, if you ever played the original FF, you are in for some fond recollections.
Rather than developing the game from scratch, Square Enix ported the iOS version to Android, and sadly this mars the user experience. This is because the developer did not adapt the game to the screen formats of popular Android devices (usually 16:9) and kept the 4:3 format of the iPhone, with some fugly black borders around. It's really a waste of potential, and lazy on Square Enix' side.
Moreover, many reviewers report that the game frequently lags, which is another indication that Square Enix did not take the time to properly optimize the game for Android. Perhaps that explains the lower price of the game, compared to FF3 for Android.
All gripes aside, it's still good to see that 25-year old games still have life in them, in the age when hit series see new installments every six months or so. Head over to Google Play to check out Final Fantasy for Android and let us know your opinion.
Google Fiber launched this week in Kansas City bringing fiber Internet and TV to area residents. If you're a Kansas City resident, feel free to rub it in to the rest of the world that you have have 1gbps Internet. $120 / month gets you the full package and all the goods, $70/month doesn't get you TV, but gets you Internet and lastly, if you're cheap, you can get Internet for free after paying $300 to get your fiber laid.
Don't want to move to Kansas City to get Google Fiber TV? That's OK. You can try the generation 2 Google TV from Vizio. That is, if you can find their Co-Star device. That thing is HOT. It sold out of the initial stock in 12 hours. And no wonder it's hot, it comes with OnLive gaming and costs only $99. Not bad.
The Xoom WiFi officially got Jelly Bean this week. If you don't have a Google reference device, the CyanogenMod team has you covered. This past week we saw well over a dozen devices get official CM10 previews.
Last but not least, we announced a very special show for next week.
A wonderful video has been created to exhibit a potential future of visually augmented reality. Perhaps an eventual evolution of existing projects such as Google Glass.
This exceptional short film lets you see through the eyes of a ‘Sight’ user. ‘Sight’ is a fictional electronic contact lens system that utilizes Heads-Up-Displays and alters your perception of an environment. Not only is an incredible feat of special effects, but it brings to life so many ideas for augmented reality you have surely thought of these past few months.
Here is the original video on Vimeo, in full HD for your enjoyment. Let us know your thoughts, as always.
Things continue to look not-so-good for Samsung in its complicated patent-based lawsuit against Apple. The two giants are going to face each other off in courts starting with July 30 in the U.S. case, the most important one of for both companies – and they're fighting it out in over 50 cases in 10 countries.
Now we hear that the iPhone and iPad maker scored other similar documents that reveal internal Samsung discussions regarding similarities between its products and Apple's. One of the interesting tidbits, which Samsung will have a tough time fighting, is the fact that Best Buy customers returned Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices after realizing they were not iPads, which is what they though they were buying in the first place:
Samsung was forced to release a bunch of documents it had been keeping under seal that show the likeness between its products and Apple's. Examples outlined in the documents include comments from Samsung workers discussing similarities with Apple's products, and reports Samsung got from retailer Best Buy that Samsung tablets were being returned because customers thought they were getting iPads. Samsung still has a pending motion to prevent all of this information from being included at trial.
So far, Samsung did not have such a great time in courts, where Apple has won more favorable rulings than the South Korean company did, with the most recent one being scored in the U.S. case – the jury was instructed to take into account that Samsung did not preserve documents that could have been used by Apple as evidence in court.
We are thoroughly following the Apple vs Samsung battle because it's one of the most important legal fights out there for the mobile business, so we'll be back with more details from the U.S. case that's about to begin.
Meanwhile, if any of those Best Buy buyers that returned Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices after realizing they were not iPads are reading these lines, then let us know what happened back then and why you made such a mistake.
The Apple vs Samsung patent-based U.S. case is set to start on July 30, but until then we already have various tidbits to show you from the cases each company will try to prove in court in this legal clash of the titans – and they surely have a complex relationship.
The two companies are fighting for market share and profits in the smartphone and tablet business, but they are also bound by a multi-billion dollar component supply partnership. Also important is the fact that they are facing each other off in more than 50 cases spread across 10 countries, and they're all mobile-related.
Apple has scored a few victories against Samsung in pre-trial rulings including a couple injunctions in the U.S. against the Galaxy Nexus and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 – albeit the Galaxy Nexus is still selling in the region after a second Samsung appeal succeeded to stay the initial decision, but also an adverse inference jury instruction. The company also won a few days ago a EU-wide injunction against Galaxy Tab 7.7 sales but also lost an injunction in the UK against the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
But it turns out that Apple lawyers may also use Google against Samsung, at least according to Apple's brief which mentions some Samsung interesting documents:
"Samsung's documents show the similarity of Samsung's products is no accident or, as Samsung would have it, a 'natural evolution,'" Apple argues in its brief. "Rather, it results from Samsung's deliberate plan to free-ride on the iPhone's and iPad's extraordinary success by copying their iconic designs and intuitive user interface. Apple will rely on Samsung's own documents, which tell an unambiguous story."
Apparently these documents reveal that the Search giant warned Samsung in the past that some of its Android products are too similar to the iPhone and iPad:
In February 2010, Google told Samsung that Samsung's "P1" and "P3" tablets (Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1) were "too similar" to the iPad and demanded "distinguishable design vis-Ã -vis the iPad for the P3."
In 2011, Samsung's own Product Design Group noted that it is "regrettable" that the Galaxy S "looks similar" to older iPhone models.
As part of a formal, Samsung-sponsored evaluation, famous designers warned Samsung that the Galaxy S "looked like it copied the iPhone too much," and that "innovation is needed." The designers explained that the appearance of the Galaxy S "[c]losely resembles the iPhone shape so as to have no distinguishable elements," and "[a]ll you have to do is cover up the Samsung logo and it's difficult to find anything different from the iPhone."
These are all points that Apple will make in court, and we're certainly interested what the jury will think.
This sort of evidence is all the more intriguing in this case as Judge Lucy Koh, who presides the U.S. case, famously asked Samsung counsel in one of the early U.S. face offs to recognize the Galaxy Tab from two tablets she was holding, one being an iPad. The lawyers were not able to identify the tablet of their client "from that distance" – or about 10 feet away – although they finally managed to provide the right answer.
We'll be back with more news from this battle of giants in the near future.
All the main companies in the tech business are posting their financial details for the second quarter of the year, ending on June 30, and after we looked at various players in the mobile business – including Google, Apple, AT&T or Samsung – we now have Amazon's financial report for Q2 2012 to inspect.
As expected, the most important product for the company remains its own tablet, the Kindle Fire, a device that's sold at cost, as the giant retailer tries to make money off the digital content purchased on the tablet by its owners.
But Amazon's numbers weren't necessarily good for a company that's fairly interested in turning in a healthy profit each quarter. The company reported $12.83 billion in sales for the period, a 29% increase in sales, but net income dropped 96% compared to the year-ago quarter to $7 million.
Sure, that number was affected by a $65 million "of estimated net loss related to the acquisition and integration of Kiva Systems, Inc." but also by a "$272 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter. But $7 million is still a very low number for such a retailer.
It is not clear how many Kindle Fire units the company sold in the second quarter of the year, but those numbers must have surely been affected by the launch of the new iPad, which made Apple discount the iPad 2 by $100, but also by the Nexus 7 rumors that hit the web during the time – the Jelly Bean tablet has only been unveiled in late June, and started selling on its announcement day at Google I/O.
What we're mostly interested to see from Amazon is its new generation of Kindle Fire tablets, which may be announced and launched in the following months – the company is rumored to have quite a few models in stock soon, with the most recent report suggesting that Amazon will release six different Kindle Fire versions this year.
Over the past few years we’ve been hearing rumors every now and then about a possible Facebook phone. However, Mark Zuckerberg has just crushed that idea in Facebook’s recent earnings call saying: “Building out a whole phone really wouldn't make much sense for us to do.”
And indeed it doesn’t. There are now close to 800 million Android and iOS devices in the market, and Android phones are now growing at a rate of 1 million per day, or 365+ million per year. Plus, there’s a Facebook app for these devices, that does a pretty good job, or at least it should (if it’s horrible, it’s Facebook’s own fault) at delivering the Facebook service to anyone using such a device.
So why would Facebook go into the hardware business, to build a phone around a single app? There’s not that much more they could offer to users to warrant buying a “Facebook phone” instead of any other phone from another company that also has access to Facebook.
For some reason HTC got the crazy idea last year to make a “Facebook phone”, the HTC Cha Cha, which was basically just a regular Android phone, with a special hardware button for Facebook. But that’s hardly a reason for anyone who uses Facebook to want to get that phone over other ones.
There are now rumors of HTC working with Facebook yet again for a new “Facebook phone”, which implies some kind of a successor to the HTC Cha Cha, rather than a phone made by Facebook. I doubt this new phone will be any more successful than the HTC Cha Cha, unless HTC makes it one of their flagship devices. But then, people would simply buy it because it would be such a great overall phone, rather than because it would be a “Facebook phone”.
Dominating the high-end part of the smartphone world doesn't seem to be enough for Samsung, which is constantly looking to strengthen its presence in the low-end and mid-range niches as well. One phone that could place itself right between these sectors is the Galaxy S Lightray 4G, supposedly headed to MetroPCS in August.
The information comes via a Howard Forumsleak and is not yet confirmed, but the fistful of high-quality "spilled" photos and the almost complete spec sheet guarantee that we're not dealing with a bogus rumor.
That said, the Galaxy S Lightray 4G seems like a pretty bizarre device, starting with its name. I'm sure that most of you tuned in to this article because of the "S" branding in the phone’s title, which made you hope the phone might have something to do with the Galaxy S2 or S3. Well, it doesn't, as far as we can tell, neither in terms of design, nor in hardware.
The exterior is actually very similar to that of Verizon's Samsung Droid Charge, a 2011 LTE-enabled phone which hasn't exactly been a winner. As far as specs go, we don't know all of them just yet, but the ones we do know place the Lightray ages behind the Galaxy S3 and quite significantly behind the S2, too.
Sporting a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display with an unknown resolution, the Galaxy S Lightray 4G is set to come with an 8 MP rear-facing camera with flash, an 1.3 MP front-facing webcam and 4G LTE connectivity, which ain't too shabby. However, the phone is rumored to be only packing a 1.3 GHz single-core processor and that's clearly below par even for mid-rangers these days.
Furthermore, based on the leaked photos, the 4.3-incher might only run Android 2.3 Gingebread upon its release, which would be terribly disappointing. An included 16GB microSD card, HDMI port, TV antenna for "Mobile TV", and mobile hotspot capability complete the rumored spec sheet of the Lightray, making it one tough nut to crack. Will it be a low-end device? A mid-range one? Something in between?
We should find that out pretty soon, considering that MetroPCS has supposedly scheduled the new Samsung handheld for a mid-August release. If that’s true, an official unveiling is quite imminent. Is anyone excited about the Lightray?
