Unique Android feature: When you send a text message, it seems that it may deliver it to the wrong person.
Tag Archives | Google Android
Finally, an "Android Touch" Media Player
Samsung says it’s going to show off the Galaxy Player–essentially a Galaxy S phone without the phone part–at CES early next month. I’m glad to see the iPod Touch get some direct competition, but I still wonder whether something based on Windows Phone 7, which has better built-in entertainment features than Android, might not be an even more intriguing possibility.
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Kindle Magazines and Newspapers Finally Move Beyond the Kindle
Whenever I write about the reading materials that are available for Amazon.com’s Kindle, I have to remember to be precise. A very good selection of magazines and newspapers exist in Kindle form, but you’ve only been only to read them on Kindle hardware, not on the Kindle apps available for the iPhone Android, and other platforms.
Today, that’s changed–not completely, but quite a bit. Amazon has updated its Kindle app for Android to version 2.0, and the new version lets you buy magazines and newspapers, in both single-copy and subscription form.
Amazon says more than a hundred publications are available. That’s an impressive start, but there’s further to go–by my count, folks who own the Kindle e-reader have access to 238 magazines and papers. For now, the Android app’s selection is spotty (you can get Newsweek but not TIME; The New York Times but not The Wall Street Journal).
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Tango on the iPod Touch
A couple of months ago, Laura Locke told us about a new smartphone video-calling app called Tango. Now it’s available in a version for the current, camera-equipped version of the iPod Touch. And the Android version uses the OS’s new background notifications to dramatically reduce the impact on battery life.
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The Nexus S: Unadulterated Android
Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Google Nexus S
Price: $529 (unlocked)
Hey, I forgot to mention: I reviewed Google and Samsung’s Nexus S smartphone for TIME.com. (Executive summary: best Android phone I’ve seen, nice hardware, the latest and greatest version of Android in uncontaminated form–but the OS still needs more polish.)
With the iPhone, you can be reasonably confident that there will be only one new model a year–and that the current model will be the best available iOS phone. (Of course, if the iPhone lands on Verizon soon, decisions will get trickier.) With Android, things move far more quickly–there are 172 available Android handsets so far (as of last week). And a whole bunch of handsets have had the honor of being the best single Android phone to date, usually for very brief periods. To me, the Nexus S is the current best single Android phone to date–but I’m not making any bets on how long it’ll hold the title.
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Android Market Gets a Facelift
One of Android’s weakest links has been the Android Market app store–it’s hard to find stuff, and the whole atmosphere feels a bit like a flea market. So it’s good to hear that Google is rolling out an improved version.
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Come to the Honeycomb Hideout
Engadget has some fuzzy photos and other details on the Android tablet–running the upcoming Honeycomb OS update–which Android honcho Andy Rubin showed off briefly at last week’s All Things Digital: Dive Into Mobile conference.
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Chrome OS and Android: Questions, Questions, and More Questions
Google's Cr-48 Chrome OS notebook
It’s been an exceptionally eventful week for news about the future of Google’s operating systems. On Monday night, I attended the opening session of the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco, cohosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. It featured a meaty conversation with Andy Rubin, the father of Android. Then yesterday, I took a side trip from Dive Into Mobile to go to Google’s Chrome event, which ended with details on Chrome OS’s rollout. (The Chrome OS notebooks that were supposed to go on sale this holiday season have been postponed until the first half of 2011, but Google is launching a pilot program based around a test Chrome OS device called the Cr-48.)
Both events answered some of my questions about what’s next for Google’s OSes, but they also left me asking new ones. Here they are–starting with ones relating to Chrome OS, since we learned more about it than we did about the next generation of Android.
Continue Reading →
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Nexus S: In a World of Adulterated Google, a Pure Google Experience
It’s a busy day for long-rumored Google developments turning into official announcements: The company has announced the Nexus S, the first Android phone to run Android 2.3 “Gingerbread.” The phone is made by Samsung and has an interesting-sounding curved 4″ AMOLED display, a 1-GHz Hummingbird CPU, 512MB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and two cameras; It’ll be sold unlocked starting on December 16th, and is intended to run on T-Mobile in the US.
Gingerbread doesn’t sound like a massive update, but Google says it’s the fastest version of Android to date. It features tweaks to the on-screen keyboard, status updates, text selection, and cut-and-paste. And as Eric Schmidt recently teased, it supports Near-Field Communications, an emerging technology that will enable activities like easily using your phone to make payments at retail stores.
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The Alleged Playstation Phone Looks … Good!
The folks at Engadget continue to get the scoop on Sony Ericsson’s rumored Playstation Phone. This time, they found a pair of YouTube videos showing a little bit of the device in action.
And so far, it’s promising in its simplicity. Rather than gum up the works with Sony’s Xperia operating system, the phone is running stock Android, supposedly version 2.3. Playstation games are accessed through a Playstation app.
Hopefully, it stays this way. I don’t think Sony needs to heavily modify Android to make a good gaming phone, as long as the games are easily accessible and on par with Sony’s PSP handheld. Like the Xbox Live app on Windows Phone 7, a standalone app could help act as a unifying hub for the Playstation Network.