Thread: All Things Android

Samsung Overtakes Apple with Biggest Selling Single Handset

By: Vincent Chang | 16th Aug 2011: 8:29am The Swedish manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, has released its "Top 10"-li[at]st for July 2011. The list is based on the number of pieces of custom made mobile phone cases ordered from Krusell during July 2011.


Krusell's list is unique due to the fact that it reflects the sales of phones on six continents and in more than 70 countries around the globe.
"Two months ago I predicted that we would see this Samsung model as the number one selling case," says Ulf Sandberg CEO at Krusell.
"I was a bit too hot on the trigger, since I was wrong two times before it became reality. I expect us to see the same results, with minor changes, for the list of August but I can be wrong again of course" he added.

1. (2) Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II
2. (1) Apple iPhone 4
3. (3) HTC Sensation
4. (4) Nokia 3720 Classic
5. (10) HTC Desire S
6. (-) Nokia 6303 Classic
7. (9) Nokia C5
8. (-) HTC Wildfire S
9. (8) HTC Desire HD
10. (-) Samsung B2100

() = Last month's position.

What Google gains in bold Motorola bid

$12.5B deal key to growth, legal protection

6:27 AM, Aug. 16, 2011 |


BY MICHAEL LIEDTKE AND PETER SVENSSON

ASSOCIATED PRESS



SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's $12.5-billion deal to buy cell phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings is aimed at giving the Internet search leader more legal firepower as it battles Apple and Microsoft to gain the upper hand in the increasingly important mobile computing market.
The all-cash acquisition announced Monday is the boldest move in Google's 13-year history.
Besides being -- by far -- the largest deal that Google has ever proposed, buying Motorola would push the company into phone and computer tablet manufacturing for the first time, at the risk of alienating device makers that depend on Google's Android operating system.
The proposed deal also is likely to increase government scrutiny of Google. Antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe already are parsing its business practices to determine whether it has been abusing its power to stifle competition. The inquiries are focused primarily on Google's Internet search and advertising businesses, but regulators are also looking into whether Google uses Android to ensure its services receive preferential treatment.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., is framing its Motorola acquisition as a way to protect the competitive landscape at a time when Android and the device makers using the software are facing a litany of lawsuits alleging that Google's operating system pilfered other companies' patent-protected technology.
Motorola, which introduced its first cell phone nearly 30 years ago, has more than 17,000 patents, with 7,500 awaiting approval. That trove presumably will give Google and its Android more patent protection against legal antagonists that include three of the technology industry's most powerful companies -- Apple, Microsoft and Oracle.
Apple and Google were once so close that Google's former CEO, Eric Schmidt, sat on Apple's board. But the two have grown increasingly antagonistic as Android provided hardware makers with a way to counter the popularity of Apple's iPhone and iPad.
Microsoft, one of Google's bitterest rivals for years, is desperately trying to make inroads in the mobile device market. Forrester analyst John McCarthy said he thinks Microsoft now may try to counter Google by pursuing a takeover of its partner, cell phone marker Nokia.
Oracle is seeking billions of dollars from Google in a federal lawsuit alleging Android owes licensing fees for using the Java programming language that it acquired from Sun Microsystems.
Getting Motorola's patent portfolio will "help protect Google from anticompetitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies," Google CEO Larry Page told analysts during a Monday conference call.

Said it before - Microsoft buying Nokia would be a great help to both companies, they're both getting lamped in the Smartphone market.

Firefox for Android updated with new capabilities and design changes

August 16th, 2011 Leave a comment Visited 137 times, 36 so far today



Firefox for Android updated with new capabilities and design changes
Mozilla has released a major update to their Firefox mobile browser for the Android platform.
The new edition features some user interface changes in addition to performance enhancements.
Firefox developers said in a blog post:

Firefox for Android provides a seamless way for users to take the Firefox experience they know and love everywhere along with a sleek look that allows users to focus on the websites they visit. The interface is streamlined to be consistent with the Android look and feel while fonts and buttons are now optimized for tablets. Additional tablet optimization and support is planned for future releases.
The new welcome page helps users discover browser tools and features (like Firefox Sync, add-ons, tabbed browsing and bookmarks) that are conveniently stowed away in the side panels. Many users will notice faster zooming, crisp text and reduced pixelation due to enhanced image rendering in Firefox for Android.

I would imagine Google are a tad miffed, but with all the lawsuits flying around, who can blame them?

Amazon Kindle Tablet runs Kindle OS based on Android

TechCrunch touched the Amazon Tablet and revealed tons of details about the 7-inch Amazon Tablet, that will be a pain for Apple.

Sep 3 2011, 11:07am CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

This is kind of an interesting twist to rumors about unreleased products. TechCrunch's MG Ziegler got to "touch" the unreleased Amazon Kindle Tablet and write about it. No photos, but lots of details about the upcoming Amazon Tablet are now revealed. As I suggested in this report about the HP TouchPad price sweet spot the Amazon Kindle tablet will really just cost $250.
Besides the cool low price, Amazon took control over the OS and forked Android to build their own Kindle OS. Amazon's eco-system is supposed to be tightly integrated into Kindle OS. This means you can buy apps and media very easily on the Kindle Tablet. MG Ziegler also says that Google services are nowhere to be seen.
As predicted the first Amazon Tablet will have a 7-inch screen and with the low $250 price point it will be the must have holiday gadget this year eating away at the iPad market share. The Amazon Kindle tablet is supposed to launch in late November - possibly in the BlackFriday week.

Originally Posted by baldrick

it is rootable

I remember when we only spoke about girls that way..

agoda.com Launches Android App For Easy Mobile Hotel Booking

PRWebPRWeb – 18 mins ago

agoda.com, today announced the launch of an Android app, allowing even more smartphone users to book hotels on-the-go.

Singapore (PRWEB) September 07, 2011

agoda.com, Asia’s global hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq: PCLN), today announced the launch of an Android app, allowing even more smartphone users to book hotels on-the-go.

The agoda.com Android app joins the recently released iPhone app in making mobile booking available to more people. The Android app has all the features of the iPhone version, including immediate access to more than 160,000 hotels worldwide, instant confirmation on bookings, and the ability to search hotels by current location.

With more than 21,000 hotels and resorts in Asia alone, the agoda.com android app gives travelers access to deals that aren't offered on other sites. Users can flick through hotel photos, check property facilities and read authentic customer reviews to find exactly what they need.

Giving travelers the edge on last-minute bookings, customers can use the app to find nearby deals no matter where they are. Travelers can step off the plane, book a hotel, and get directions from wherever they are to the hotel's front desk. By the time they arrive, their confirmation voucher is in their inbox, ready to present on check-in.

President of agoda.com Mr. Robert Rosenstein said, "We are very excited about our newly released Android app. Agoda's technology has been built to support the needs of time-constrained, on-the-go consumers and is adaptable to different devices and platforms, both in the cloud and via unique applications. Android is one of our many exciting areas of development."

iphone is still better

Originally Posted by mc2

iphone is still better

You keep on telling yourself that.

Originally Posted by mc2

iphone is still better

So interesting remark! I love your reasoning and your arguments!

Originally Posted by ThaiWalker

Originally Posted by mc2

iphone is still better

So interesting remark! I love your reasoning and your arguments!

As long as he makes them in a thread that isn't labelled "All Things Android", the dumb shit.

Google's Eric Schmidt Says Android Ice Cream Sandwich will Launch in October or November

Category: Mobile
Posted: September 7, 2011 07:06PM
Author: bp9801


Google's Android OS has taken the world by storm since its launch just a few short years ago. Many people are eagerly awaiting the newest implementation, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, since it will combine the Honeycomb tablet version with the Gingerbread phone version. We've known that Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) will be launching by the end of the year, but now we have a more definitive date. Google's Eric Schmidt says that we can expect devices running ICS to launch this October or November. This coincides with rumors saying we can expect the Nexus Prime phone, the first device running ICS, to launch in October. Hopefully both of those pan out since it should start the beginning of the end for the fragmentation of Android. It will have to be seen just how many current devices can be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, since I am sure there will be certain hardware requirements that have to be met. In any case, we are getting closer to the unified Android OS.

Originally Posted by mc2

iphone is still better

and cheaper,

harryb is just jealous because the iphone is simply more pretty than his Samsung, and for phone jewelry lovers, this is very important

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by mc2

iphone is still better

and cheaper,

harryb is just jealous because the iphone is simply more pretty than his Samsung, and for phone jewelry lovers, this is very important

Butters, this is an ANDROID thread, you dumb fuck. Go and wank over your Apple stuff somewhere else, you retard.

Originally Posted by mc2

iphone is still better

for those people who need to be protected from their own incompetence

Who'd have thought RIM would be hurting so badly? They must be willing someone to buy them out.

Android's share of the smartphone market has almost quadrupled over the last year, and now stands at more than double that of Apple's iOS, according to Gartner.

On Thursday, the analyst firm issued its handset market statistics for the first quarter of 2011. According to its figures, 36.3 million Android phones were sold in the quarter, up from 5.2 million the previous year. This rise took Android's smartphone market share from 9.6 percent to 36 percent.

Apple's iPhone operating system saw sales roughly double from 8.4 million to 16.9 million over the same period, but its market share rose more modestly, from 15.3 percent to 16.8 percent. This discrepancy in increases can be explained by the fact that overall smartphone sales almost doubled, going from 54.5 million units sold in the first quarter of 2010 to 100.8 million in the first quarter of 2011.

Nokia's soon-to-retire Symbian OS saw sales go up from 24.1 million to 27.6 million over the year, but its market share went drastically down from 44.2 percent to 27.4 percent. Gartner principal research analyst Roberta Cozza said in a statement the decline would "precipitate a competitors' rush to capture Symbian's market share in the mid-tier".

Symbian is being retired due to Nokia's tie-in with Microsoft over the Windows Phone platform. According to Gartner's figures, Windows Phone 7 has not been an unadulterated success. Its introduction in 2010 as the successor to the aged Windows Mobile platform saw sales of smartphones using a Microsoft OS fall stay flat at around 3.7 million, with market share falling from 6.8 percent to 3.6 percent.

"Windows Phone saw only modest sales that reached 1.6 million units in the first quarter of 2011, as devices launched at the end of 2010 failed to grow in consumer preference and [operators] continued to focus on Android," the report stated. "In the long term, Nokia's support will accelerate Windows Phone's momentum."

With Android, Symbian and iOS in the top three spots and Microsoft in the fifth, the fourth place in the top five was taken by Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry OS. BlackBerry OS saw its market share fall over the year from 19.7 percent to 12.9 percent, albeit on sales that rose from 10.8 million to 13 million units.

Gartner's figures for the handset market as a whole show smartphones to be taking an ever-increasing share. Overall, 427 million mobile communication devices were sold in the first quarter, a 19-percent increase on the previous year.

"Smartphones accounted for 23.6 per cent of overall sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85 per cent year-on-year," Cozza said. "This share could have been even higher, but manufacturers announced a number of high-profile devices during the first quarter of 2011 that would not ship until the second quarter of 2011. We believe some consumers delayed their purchases to wait for these models."

Nokia still dominates the overall handset market, commanding a 25.1-percent market share in the first quarter with 107.6 million sales. This is slightly down from the same period the previous year, when sales were 110.1 million and Nokia's handset market share was 30.6 percent.

Second-place Samsung had its strongest first quarter yet, with sales of 68.8 million handsets. This represented a rise on its 64.9 million unit sales the previous year, but a slight fall in market share from 18 percent to 16.1 percent. LG was in third place with sales of 24 million and a market share of 5.6 percent, both figures representing a year-on-year decline.

Apple was in fourth place, having boosted sales from 8.3 million to 16.9 million, and market share from 2.3 percent to 3.9 percent. "Considering the higher-than-average price of the iPhone, this is a remarkable result and highlights the impact that a strong aspirational brand can have on a product," Gartner research vice president Carolina Milanesi commented in the statement.

Rounding out the top five was RIM, with a flat three-percent market share but sales up from 10.8 million to 13 million.

Gartner's report added that while the shift to smartphones is accelerating in mature markets, "smartphones overall moved down market in the first quarter of 2011". It noted that manufacturers such as HTC, Sony Ericsson, Alcatel and ZTE have announced a broader portfolio of mostly Android-based mid-tier devices.

I heard Htc and google maybe taking on Apple in court. Apple is for women and femboys which is why Apple are bitching about issues.

Originally Posted by Jesus Jones

I heard Htc and google maybe taking on Apple in court. Apple is for women and femboys which is why Apple are bitching about issues.

I opened another thread on this very subject. They're all suing each other.

Google and Intel working on Android phones for early 2012 release
Collaboration will produce phones using Atom and successor chips as Intel tries to break into smartphone market

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 September 2011 08.53 BST


Android phones featuring Intel chips should be available in the first half of 2012, Intel executives said on Tuesday at its annual developer conference in San Francisco.

While Microsoft showed off Windows running on ARM-based systems, Intel and Google on Tuesday launched a development partnership to get the Android mobile operating system to run on Intel's lower-powered Atom chips.

The move is the latest effort by Intel to get into the booming smartphone market, where processors based on the ARM architecture devised by the Cambridge-based company of the same name dominate.

Google and Intel say they will work together to optimise future versions of Google's Android mobile software for Intel's Atom processors, hoping to speed the development and time-to-market of future Intel-powered smartphones.

The move could jump-start Intel's efforts to expand into the market for mobile phones and touchscreen tablet devices at a time when sales of PCs are slowing in mature markets such as North America and Europe.

Intel is allying itself with one of the biggest players in the mobile industry. Android dominates the smartphone market, with around 40% of worldwide sales, well ahead of rival operating systems from Apple, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft.

Its problem in reaching the smartphone market has been that the x86 architecture that it uses, while well-suited for heavy computation on PCs, consume too much power to be efficient on smartphones with limited battery lives. Instead, smartphones use chips made by companies including Texas Instruments and Samsung, which in turn license the architecture from ARM.

But Intel's chief executive Paul Otellini, speaking at the conference, said the smartphone market is still in its early stages.

"The smartphone business is not established in terms of the ultimate shakeout of who's going to win and who is going to lose," Otellini said. "You saw what happened in terms of how fast Android took share from Apple. So good products on good platforms can really still make a big difference in this industry."

While Android technically already could support Intel chips, the new partnership will make it much easier for a manufacturer to bring an Intel-based Android phone to market.

Until now, it has been up to phone manufacturers to make their Android phones compatible with Intel chips. But future versions of the Android software will be optimised to work with Intel chips and technologies.

"It's really about Google saying that Intel is going to be a first-class citizen in the Android ecosystem," said David Kanter, an analyst with Real World Technologies. But he added that Intel still needs to win over handset makers if it hopes to succeed in the smartphone market.

Otellini also again highlighted his confidence in the new "ultrabook" computing market during Tuesday's speech, saying the lighter, sleeker laptops should hit store shelves in time for Christmas.

Now this is weird....

Samsung Galaxy Skin Flexible Smartphone Shown, Android Jellybean Device Sports 4-inch Touchscreen [Video]

September 23, 2011, By Sanjeev Ramachandran


This new flexible smartphone has all in it to leave you wonderstruck. A crazy device by all counts, it comes from the stables of Samsung. Christened Galaxy Skin, the Android handset can be made into different shapes as you desire.
The Korean company has revealed that the phone’s production will start in the second quarter of 2012. The smartphone sports a 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED flexible display, a 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM. It comes with dual cameras: an 8-megapixel rear shooter and a VGA front snapper with auto focus sporting different modes like self-portrait, stop motion, action and Panorama.

A 1500 mAh battery backs the handset that supports Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and much more. We might get the device with two memory options 16 GB and 32 GB.
It is believed that the device will be powered by the Google’s Android Jellybean OS that will come after the Ice Cream Sandwich. But some other stories indicate that a special Google OS version named Android Flexy will be running on the handset.
Samsung has confirmed that they have started the production of the AMOLED screens made of plastic polyimide substrate that can be bent, rolled and even withstand hammer blows. Compared to the normal Samsung AMOLED screens, this new one produces more screen brightness with low energy consumption.
The super slim flexible phone comes with a natural user interface that adjusts according to the condition and sensitivity.

The Electro Activity Polymer that sends electronic signals adjusting to different shapes is the life of this device. It is believed that the device can be used as a full-time mouse too. And, that’s not all. You can even turn this smartphone to a table clock, a wrist watch and even a smart projector.

^ Wow!!

now that is cool, and something worthwhile to upgrade to

Can anyone offer advice on syncing Android (htc) with Mac, please?

I have a test version of 'Missing Sync For Android' but it doesn't seem able to transfer data such as my phone book from the sim to my iMac. In fact, I don't know where the phone book might be stored in the iMac unless the software is clever enough to merge it with my email address book, but I doubt that.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

now that is cool, and something worthwhile to upgrade to

It doesn't run iOS or XP Butters, so completely out of your league, you dumb fuck.