Posts tagged open-source

MIPS simplifies Android application development with tools for MIPS architecture

SUNNYVALE, USA: MIPS Technologies Inc. has announced availability of advanced debug and development tools that simplify Android application development.

These tools are free-of-charge through the Android on MIPS community. MIPS Technologies is making available the QEMU open source emulator, and through its partnership with Viosoft Corp., offering industry-leading Arriba development tools for QEMU to make development even easier.

MIPS Technologies has also enhanced the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) for the MIPS architecture to include a compiler and a rich GUI that streamlines the entire build process to a simple point-and-click for fast native development.

“Android development is gaining increasing popularity among MIPS developers. We already have more than 3,000 members of the Android on MIPS community, with upwards of 40 new registrants each day,” said Art Swift, vice president of marketing, MIPS Technologies. “MIPS Technologies is leading the industry not only in bringing Android to a broad range of consumer devices, but also in making development fast and easy. The tools that MIPS Technologies offers for Android development go far beyond solutions for other architectures, driving application development and growing the ecosystem around Android on MIPS.”

QEMU offers a virtualized emulation platform to speed development of Android applications on the MIPS architecture. The fully-integrated set of Arriba development tools for QEMU support native and Java development, and provide unprecedented visibility into code development. Tools include the time-tested Arriba Linux debug and profiling technologies and a comprehensive set of plug-in modules that offer valuable insight into the Android software stack, including the Android System Level Event Analyzer.

With the Android NDK for the MIPS architecture, developers can use native libraries with Android applications—allowing these applications to access existing software libraries supported for devices such as set-top boxes, digital TVs and consumer electronics. In addition, developers of performance-intensive applications such as gaming can create optimized code to deliver an enhanced user experience. One of the key improvements to the Android NDK – unavailable on other CPU architectures – is a rich and simplified GUI environment for the building of native Android applications that would otherwise be a manually-driven and cumbersome process.

QEMU and the Android NDK for the MIPS architecture are available now, and the Arriba tools for QEMU will be available this month. All components are free-of-charge.

Pre-Order and Expo of Indosat Android Phones Price

Pre-Order and Expo of Indosat Android Phones Price

Indosat is going to open pre-order for 5 Android Phones starting from 22-88 February 2010.
The user will get special price and bonus for dealing in pre-order periode and the order can be taken at the Expo on March, 3 2010.
There are 5 Android phones confirmed by Indosat that ready for pre-order which are HTC Hero, Motorola Milestone, Samsung Galaxy Spica, Huawei U8230 and LG GW 620.
Android is open source mobile operating system based on Linux Kernel that was initially developed by Android Inc and then it is continued by Open Handset Alliance.
Seems like the trend of mobile phone at this time is using Android OS.
The following is the list of 5 phones Android Indosat: e :
HTC Hero
Normal Price: Rp 5.250.000
Pre-Order Price: Rp 4.999.000
Bonus Pre-Order:
GPS Teleatlas application licence 1 year

Motorola Milestone
Normal Price: Rp 6.250.000
Pre-Order Price: Rp 5.999.000
Bonus Pre-Order:
GPS Teleatlas application licence 1 year

Samsung Galaxy Spica
Normal Price: Rp 3.499.000
Pre-Order Price: Rp 2.999.000
Bonus Pre-Order:
2 Exclusicr Samsung Galaxy Spica Android T-Shirt
Starter Pack
Data unlimited package for 1 month

Huawei U8230
Normal Price: Rp 3.799.000
Pre-Order Price: Rp 3.499.000
Bonus Pre-Order:
Free SD Card consists of 20 Top application, Pouch and interesting Gimmick2.

LG GW 620
Normal Price: Rp 4.399.000
Pre-Order Price: Rp 3.499.000
Bonus Pre-Order:
Buletooth Handsfree Prada

tag: Indosat Android Expo, Harga Ponsel Android Indosat, Indosat Android Phone Price, Ponsel Android, Handphone Android, Harga Huawei U8230 Indosat, Harga LG GW 620 Indosat, Harga Samsung Galaxy Spica Indosat, Harga Motorola Milestone Indosat, Harga HTC Hero Indosat, Pre-Order Android Indosat

Bluestreak, SafeNet ally for secure premium movie solution on Android devices

Mobile World Congress 2010, MONTREAL, CANADA & BALTIMORE, USA: Bluestreak Technology Inc., a leader in open Flash platforms for wireless and wired devices, and SafeNet Inc., a leader in information security, have announced a partnership to deliver an integrated solution, for secure distribution of premium content, including music and video content over 3G and wireless networks.

These new protected content delivery solutions combine the graphically rich, interactive video experiences that are synonymous with Bluestreak Technology with the increased content protection that SafeNet’s DRM Fusion Client provides.

With the explosion of downloads of digital content on 3G and wireless networks, Android is quickly becoming the platform of choice for open source mobile applications. Users are looking for complete interoperability and functionality in smart phones and Android has become the technology of choice for mobile applications. Android is fully adaptable to changing standards ad requirements since it can incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge.

“Delivering the best user experience while protecting our customers’ intellectual property and premium content is of paramount importance to us,” said Dominique Jodoin, Bluestreak Technology CEO and President. “With this partnership, we can guarantee the security of content delivery to all of our customers as well as a smooth usable user interface for end users. Our continued commitment to rendering visually compelling applications that delight users while protecting our customers is the reason why our mobile TV solutions are enjoyed by millions of wireless subscribers today.”

“SafeNet’s partnership with Bluestreak Technology further extends our DRM leadership in mobile technology—this combined solution has already been field-tested and will be delivered to a major operator,” said Dr. Simon Blake-Wilson, managing director, Embedded Security Solutions, SafeNet.

“By uniting our complete DRM solution with Bluestreak Technology’s award-winning mobile TV applications, we not only protect their customers’ premium content, but we also enable new and secured ways of bringing entertainment to mobile users hence opening new avenues of delivering premium content to the mass market.”

The secure premium movie solution supports multiple DRM technologies for protection of premium content including full-track music and video content over broadband, mobile, and online networks. This joint solution is available today and runs on a wide variety of devices including Android-enabled phones, next generation tablets, and consumer electronic devices.

Linus Torvalds: Google’s Nexus One First Mobile Phone I Don’t Hate

Best Android Applications

If you have come to love and depend upon your Android-based phone, you’ve no doubt discovered the wealth of applications on the Android Market. But as with the iPhone App store, not every app is a gem. So you’ve probably found yourself installing and quickly removing plenty of apps from your phone, hoping to find ones that are truly useful.

To help in this quest, I’ve narrowed the field to 10 indispensable applications. These apps serve a number of purposes with little overlap. Some are free and some have a price tag, but all of them are at (or near) the top of their category

1. Dolphin (free)
Dolphin is one of the best mobile Web browsers. Period. It is fast, reliable, has real tabs, gestures, and multi-touch. Although the default Android browser is an okay solution, it simply doesn’t compare, feature for feature, to Dolphin. Dolphin is also much faster than most of the other Android solutions. My big question: Why is there no Chrome for Android?

2. ChompSMS (free)
ChompSMS is the best text client for the Android phone. In fact, this text app is so much better than the default, I’m surprised that the various Android-based phones haven’t switched. One aspect that makes this app so much better than the default is the battery usage. Especially in pre-2.0 releases, the Android text app has a problem with going to sleep, so it is constantly draining battery. By switching to Chomp, you will save your battery.

3. iMusic (free)
iMusic is a tricky one because of what it does: It allows unlimited downloads of MP3s. There is a EULA that insists you agree to remove the song as soon as you have listened to it. Or you can just listen to the song off the Web. Either way, this app will have you happily searching music to your heart’s content.

4. FeedR (free)
FeedR is an RSS reader that works as both an app and a widget. So far, in my quest for the perfect RSS widget, it has proven to be the best yet. FeedR can add preconfigured feeds or you can add your own personal favorites. This app beats the competition with its ability to truly auto-update. Many other feed readers (especially those in the widget category) require a user update to function properly. FeedR handles all updates in the background, with no intervention.

5. Advanced Task Killer ($4.99)
Advanced Task Killer is one of those apps you hope you don’t need, but you sometimes must have. I have noticed on occasion a rare app hanging out in the background unnecessarily. This can lead to a much lower battery life and slower app loading or usage. Advanced Task Killer allows you to kill an application with a single click. This particular app killer includes an ignore list, a widget version, and a long-press to menu feature.

6. Exchange by Touchdown (free demo)
Exchange by Touchdown is one of the best means to Exchange connectivity on the Android phone. Its Exchange connectivity is outstanding, and the support from the developers is just as great. Now this app is a demo and is free. There is a paid version, which does not revert to demo mode (after five days). However, you must install the free version first, as the paid version is only a key to unlock the demo. If you need Exchange connectivity on your Android phone, this is THE tool.

7. ConnectBot (free)
ConnectBot is an open source secure shell client for your Android phone. This client can manage simultaneous ssh connections and copy/paste between apps, and it has shortcuts for ctrl sequences. You may notice on its Market entry that a bug exists for the Hero. The upcoming Hero update will solve this bug, and it will be worth the wait. Now if HTC will push the 2.0 update!

8. Barcode Scanner (free)
Barcode Scanner has quickly become one of my favorites. If you need to find product reviews (or price comparisons) while shopping, all you have to do is scan the bar code with your camera and open up the results. No more having to Google a product and sift through pages for reviews and/or prices.

9. Places Directory (free)
Places Directory is one of those apps you will constantly be thankful you have. With this tool, you can locate (thanks to your GPS) any nearby place, such as a hotel, restaurant, retail location, or movie theatre. Everything is broken into categories, and you can bookmark your favorites. From a places listing, you can instantly dial a location’s phone number or visit its Web site

10. Evernote (free)
Evernote is not just for the iPhone. This handy app lets you keep track of nearly anything — and in many ways. You can keep track of things with notes, photos, recordings, and more. And with an Evernote account, you can keep everything in sync online and on your PC. If you’re looking for a one-stop productivity shop app, this is it

Google’s Nexus One – Trademark violation?

Google, the internets biggest search engine, finally forayed into the smartphone segment with its latest offering the Nexus One which became available on January 5, 2010 . Google’s Nexus One uses the Android open source mobile operating system and is manufactured by HTC corporation. Google which has been nexus onecriticized for its policies and practices for including the use of others’ IP has finally landed into another controversy, this time dealing with its smartphone the Nexus One. After only a few days of the launch of Nexus One, Isa Hackett, nexus one phonedaughter of the renowned sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick has alleged that Google has lifted the name Nexus straight from the famous novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” authored by her father without any permission as reported in an article.

The novel, which was published in 1968 and later adapted in 1982 into a Hollywood movie, “Blade Runner” which is about a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard who is charged with a mission to eliminate rogue Nexus-6 model androids. Isa Hackett’s has alleged that Google’s OS Android and the Nexus One which also has Android as the OS, is too much of a coincidence and there exists a very obvious connection of the said names to the novel . She further added that the use of these names, according to them is a clear infringement of their intellectual property rights.

Google on the other hand has denied any association of the names to the novel and said that the name Nexus One had been done in a literal sense and Nexus referred to the meeting point of computer and phone. Google further stated that the usage of the word is in a different context and moreover, there exists no trademark by Mr. Dick on the said name.

It would be interesting to note the trademark position in India with regard to the use of characters of novels / story books as trademarks which i will duly follow up in my subsequent posts.

Android, Google, smartphones, English!

Ace! NewsFlash


Strapped to Android, HTC Takes a Dizzying Ride to the Top

htc-hero

Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC is on a tear. This year alone, the company has released five Android handsets. Its next phone, the HTC Nexus One, aka the Googlephone, is among the most anticipated devices of 2010.

Just about a decade old, HTC looks like it is poised to pull ahead of much older and larger rivals such as Samsung and LG in worldwide phone market share. While the older companies’ strength lies is in now-declining “feature phones,” or inexpensive, less-capable handsets, HTC’s bet on the booming smartphone business is giving it a major boost. It has also acquired a powerful godfather in Google, the Goliath whose attention is now captivated by the mobile phone business and whose chosen partner is HTC. “We have covered a distance in the last three years that many other companies haven’t in ten,” says John Wang, chief marketing officer for HTC.

About one in six smartphones in the United States in 2008 was a HTC phone, according to Neilsen Mobile. And with a slew of new handsets and a clever bet on Android, HTC is now the fourth biggest smartphone maker, after Nokia, Research In Motion and Apple. HTC’s Android portfolio now includes the original G1 and MyTouch on T-Mobile, the Hero on Sprint, and the Tattoo and Droid Eris on Verizon. And while Nokia is struggling to get a grip on the U.S. market, HTC is gaining ground. “HTC got into bed very, very early with Google and that has helped them,” says Avi Greengart, research director for mobile devices at Current Analysis.

HTC has risen to prominence rapidly because it is young, ambitious and unencumbered by the legacy technology and old business that slow down its peers. Founded in 1997, HTC has always focused on designing and manufacturing smartphones — multifunctional devices with powerful processors — rather than inexpensive flip phones. Its first product in 2000 was the the Compaq iPaq, a PDA that ran Microsoft’s Windows CE operating system. PDAs were a hot product then, but HTC CEO Peter Chou realized mobile phones would be a bigger market. Chou started courting telecom operators in Europe with an offer to create customized handsets for them. By 2002, HTC had two phones out, for O2 in the UK and Orange in France. Soon HTC was cranking out handsets for T-Mobile and other European carriers.

Placing the right bets

But it’s Android, the Google-designed open source operating system, that turned HTC from a boutique OEM (original equipment manufacturer, or contract manufacturer) into a mobile powerhouse. Over the last decade, HTC’s CEO Peter Chou has quietly networked to build a fat Rolodex and strong relationships with some of the most powerful names in the industry. Android creator Andy Rubin was one of them. Rubin’s company Danger had created the Sidekick, an extremely popular phone on the T-Mobile network. Chou’s HTC would later produce a similar phone called the MDA for T-Mobile.

In 2003, Rubin founded Android, a stealth startup whose mission was little known beyond the fact that it would create software for mobile phones. But Chou and Rubin were already talking. In 2005, Google acquired Android. As the new operating system began to take shape, HTC seemed like a good partner for the hardware.

HTC at a Glance

Employees: 9,353 (at the end of 2008, up 45.5 percent from previous year)

Headquarters: Taiwan

Founder and chairman: Cher Wang

CEO: Peter Chou

Revenue: $1.05 billion at the end of the third quarter 2009, a 10 percent decline from a year ago. Revenue grew 28.7 percent in 2008 to $4.2 billion.

R&D Expenses: $643 million (2009)

“Google’s OS required a pretty sophisticated handset and HTC knows how to do that,” says a former HTC executive who worked with the company for two years but didn’t want to be identified because he still works in the wireless industry. “HTC is aggressive and they have the speed of development to get a product to market early.”

For HTC it was an interesting opportunity, though not without its risks. “When we started to work with Google, we had no visibility at all,” says Wang. “The (Android) platform probably would not even materialize and even if it did, it could be just another one in the market. But we shared the excitement.”

So for three years before the first Android phone would hit the market, HTC poured engineers and researchers into a project aimed to create a phone that would run a brand-new operating system.

“We made the first Google phone that Google engineers used to develop Android,” says Wang. “We had about 50 HTC people roaming around Google campus then, wearing the Google badge and eating the wonderful Google food. That was how deeply the two companies collaborated.” It also speaks to HTC’s business model, says Greengart. “HTC likes to let someone else build the underpinnings for the phone and for them to work on higher-level stuff,” says Greengart.

Focus on design

Unlike Nokia, HTC has been quick to adapt to fast-changing consumer tastes in mobile phones. When slider phones were all the rage, HTC created the MDA for T-Mobile. Slim phones, touchscreens, Android devices — HTC has them all.

HTC’s ambitious expansion continues. Last year, HTC acquired One & Co., a San Francisco-based industrial design firm that has created products for Nike, Apple and Dell, among others. Over the next three years, it will spend $1 billion to create a new R&D facility near a Taipei suburb. “We are the second or the third best design house in the world when it comes to mobile phones,” says Horace Luke, chief innovation officer at HTC. “The trick of design is it is not just styling but also great engineering.”

HTC has also been quick to understand that when it comes to mobile phones, looks alone don’t cut it. “They have done a lot of innovation on software in terms of the user interface,” says Greengart. “HTC shipped a touch phone with a 3-D cube interface before most other handset makers.”

In June, HTC announced Sense, a UI skin that would sit on top of the Android OS. Sense offers widgets for adding new features, brings together contacts from different sources, and allows users to set different profiles for work and home. “With a lot of smartphones out there you have to go to four different locations — your Gmail, Flickr, Facebook or Twitter — to find what’s up with one person,” says Luke. “But content is content. It doesn’t matter where its comes from.”

Personalization will be another big trend, says Luke. “I firmly believe that the phone you have should never look like the phone I have,” he says.”If you love stocks and financial news that’s what your phone should show. But if I am interested in Hello Kitty and manga then my phone should reflect that.” It’s an idea Palm first offered up with the Pre. But since HTC’s announcement, Sense has become an important feature in new smartphones including Motorola’s Cliq.

Creating a brand

Apple’s iPhone or Research In Motion’s BlackBerry have become cultural icons. But when was the last time you heard someone say they wanted a “HTC phone?” Even when the first Android phone was launched last October, it was called the ‘Googlephone’ or T-Mobile G1; the new Googlephone is called the Nexus One. Most customers forget the HTC brand in that context.

That’s what Wang says he wants to change next. “For many years, HTC has been the company behind the scenes,” he says. “In the earlier days, we did not post our brand on the phones. But three years ago we made a decision within the company to build the HTC brand.”

It’s not just vanity. Smartphones are an intensely competitive market. At the top, Apple and Research In Motion both have strong brand recognition and a growing base of users. In the middle, producers such as Samsung and LG own a huge share of the feature-phone market, but are hungry to sell more smartphones. And at the bottom, contract manufacturers such as Acer and Asus are looking to crawl up the chain. For now, HTC still occupies the lower tiers of brand recognition. A stronger brand would translate to more clout, fatter margins and bigger revenues.

Branding is even more important in the smartphone world, where consumer tastes can shift quickly, crowning new winners and losers every few months. Having a powerful brand can shield a handset maker against some of these shifting winds. “In my time at HTC, they went from $200 million in revenue to $1 billion,” says the former HTC executive. “But you can’t continue that unless you have a brand.”

“It was becoming harder to innovate from one generation to another without a brand,” admits Wang. “If you create a phone that sells well on one carrier it’s not enough. The next version resets everything.” But, so far, HTC has not shown its commitment by allocating a hefty marketing budget for branding, says the former HTC executive.

Throwing money around won’t help, says Wang. “Brand value is like respect, you have to earn it,” he says. “You can’t buy respect. You can spend all the money you want to build the recognition but that doesn’t mean anything. I want the HTC brand to stand for a great experience.”

Creating a global culture

HTC doesn’t want to be just another Taiwanese handset manufacturer. Despite its strong Asian roots, the company has tried to build an international business culture. Almost all of HTC’s senior management is of Asian origin. The company has its headquarters in Taiwan and is listed only on the Taiwanese stock exchange.

Yet the company’s primary language is English. User documentation, technical papers and even all e-mails and staff meetings at HTC’s office in Taiwan are done in English.

“When Peter started at this company, he demanded everyone take an English test before they come in,” says Luke. “He always had a vision that the company would go global.”

Many of HTC’s executives, including company founder Cher Wang, went to graduate school in the United States. But Wang, who belongs to one of Taiwan’s richest families (her father, a plastics tycoon, was named the second-richest man in Taiwan by Forbes magazine last year), rarely grants media interviews.

HTC has also imbibed one of the greatest ideas of American business: It’s okay to fail. HTC’s R&D division called has a “target failure rate” of 95 percent, says Luke. “A research lab has to come up with enough ideas that fail fast and fail early so you can learn and harvest the right ones,” he says. “That’s very different from the culture at Taiwan, where you have to be successful all the time.”

While HTC is unmistakably aligning its future with Android, the company isn’t willing to give up on Windows Mobile — at least publicly. “Our commitment to Windows Mobile platform is unwavering,” says Wang. “Both platforms are important. They match different people.”

For HTC, the last 10 years have been a rocket-like rise. But the battle to stay ahead of the game has just begun.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Google Nexus One – a threat to iPhone

Google has recently announced Google Nexus One, the Google phone which challenges the throne on which the iPhone had been reigning thus far. With this phone, Google has entered the scenario with an innovation that simply pushes the limits a level higher. Nexus One, the Google phone, surely challenges the throne on which the iPhone had been reigning thus far.

The following 6 evident reasons why the Google Nexus 1 can possibly better than the iPhone’s status in the market.

1. Screen – First things first. When you look at a smartphone, the first thing that catches your attention is its screen. Clarity and size of the screen would be a major turn on for any smartphone lover. Well, in this aspect, the Nexus One surpasses the iPhone easily given its bigger screen and also higher resolution which contributes to better clarity.

Nexus One has a 3.7-inch screen compared to a 3.5-inch screen of an Apple iPhone.
Google Nexus One – a threat to iPhone
The Nexus one also has a widescreen WVGA AMOLED touchscreen with 800×480 pixels resolution display where as the iPhone has a 480×320 pixel resolution at 163 ppi. This simply means that Nexus One is more appealing when it comes to watching video and playing games or browsing the net as it gives sharper details and livelier images.

2. Camera – Next thing one would look for in a high-end phone would be its camera. Well in this aspect the Nexus One again defeats the legendary iPhone conveniently as the Google phone has been blessed with a huge 5-megapixel camera which is way ahead of the 3.15-megapixel camera of the iPhone 3GS. The zooming capability combined with the LED flash of Nexus One leaves the iPhone behind as the Apple device lacks both zooming option and a flash. Nexus One users can also include location of photos by syncing it with the phone’s AGPS receiver.

3. Processor – Any smartphone would surely boast about its processor and when it comes to the Nexus One it can confidently scale above the iPhone with its powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor. The iPhone, on the other hand, has ARM Cortex A8 600MHz processor, which is very slow and is nowhere close to the performance of the Nexus One snapdragon processor. In other words, things seem to happen faster and crispier on a Nexus One than on an iPhone.

4. Operating System – First and foremost, the Android OS used in Nexus One is an “Open system” so that if someone creates a better browser, address book, calendar, or email client, you can install it. Now Nexus One is the first smartphone using the Android 2.1 operating system which is an advanced version of the Android 2.0 OS used in Motorola Droid. The new operating system has better graphic, widgets and customizable homescreens. It also makes multitasking much easier and you can listen to music, surf the net and call a number at the same time without any hindrance or any delay.

The open source platform further enables a user to carry out things that are not possible on an iPhone because of its proprietary iPhone OS (based on Mac OS). Things such as getting updates from Facebook or receiving a Tweet from a friend on the phone, sending emails and listening to music from a website, all can be done in one place rather than spread across programs.

5. Memory – It’s always better to have more. And when it comes to storage capacity surely higher storage is always an added advantage. Nexus One comes with a 512MB RAM which makes it faster compared to the iPhone which has a 256MB RAM memory.
Also Nexus One comes with a 4GB microSD card that can be fitted in its microSD card slot, and the option to expand up to 32GB makes storage of songs movies and other files makes Nexus One better and more convenient than iPhone, which comes with only two choices of internal storage – 16GB and 32GB.

6. Voice Recognition Feature – This feature has been mentioned in the specs of almost all the smartphones in the market but none could give the purpose and the real usage for such a feature. Nexus One, on the other hand, has taken this character of the phone a notch higher and has made it look really useful. The voice recognition feature is compatible with almost all the software and applications and is of practical use, as users can use the voice recognition feature for text messages, emails, updated of community sites, search Google, call contacts, as well as obtain driving directions. On the other hand, the same function in iPhone is of little use as it is not compatible with most of the applications and this makes the feature rudimentary.

The Nexus One surely wins the battle ‘big time’ in this aspect. The Nexus One, given its superiority to the iPhone is extremely reasonable, as it’s cheaper than the iPhone. Nexus One comes at $529.99 unlocked, which is about $70 cheaper than iPhone 3GS (16GB). And a subsidized Nexus One on a 2-year T-Mobile contract comes at $179.99, which is $20 cheaper than a subsidized iPhone 3GS and hence it’s a better value for money product, given its superiority in its features and functionality.

Android CES 2010

Image representing Android as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase
ATandT, Dell, Motorola, Lenovo and MIPS Technologies among the companies to give Google’s Android mobile operating system a hug at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. These companies’ announcements showed that Android is not just a trendy open source platform, but a movement articulated with cutting-edge smartphones, tablet PCs and other devices. This may be the show the high-tech world looks back on and proclaims as the event that ushered in the second coming of Android. This bodes well for Google’s mobile ad designs, which is of course what Android is all about.
The 2010 Consumer Electronics Show may be the show the high-tech world looks back on and proclaims as the event that ushered in the second coming of Android.
A torrent of product releases from the show in Las Vegas this past week made it clear that Google’s operating system is not just a trendy open source platform, but a movement articulated with cutting-edge smartphones, tablet PCs and other devices.
The first coming of Android was Google and T-Mobile’s launch of the G1, the first Android smartphone, in September 2008. This was followed by the T-Mobile myTouch 3G in August 2009.
Over the next several months, Motorola unveiled the Cliq social networking phone, Sprint unveiled its HTC Hero device and Samsung launched the Behold 2 and Moment. Verizon Wireless introduced the Motorola Droid, the first to include Android 2.0 and Google Maps Navigation turn-by-turn GPS functionality.

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Phones War:Apple iPhone v/s Google Android

The google’s Android based devices have been hogging all the conversations off late. Some have hailed this platform from Google as the “iPhone killer!” Handset makers (like HTC, Motorola, Samsung and Acer) are working hard to release phones with Android on them. India already has a couple of these devices targeted at geeks from HTC and Samsung. Technology addicts and phone enthusiasts all around the world are drooling all over the new device. What is this new-platform-on-the-block and why is there so much hype around it? What is it about these phones that sets them apart from the iPhone? Can the Android be good enough to threaten the much-desired Apple iPhone?Android is an open source operating system (OS) developed by Google. A lot of handsets from different companies run this OS. Some of the more popular handsets are Motorola Droid, the HTC Dream and the Google G1. The ones available in India include the HTC Hero (for around Rs. 34,000), the HTC Tattoo (for around Rs. 19,000) the HTC Magic (for around 27,000) and the Samsung Galaxy (I7500), for around (Rs 25,000).
While some of these devices have great cameras and full QWERTY keypads, what enthusiasts really get kicks out of are the widgets, applications and the ability to customize the phone. Widgets are something that the iPhone does not have. And Apple’s strict control over what applications are available in the App Store tend to limit the amount of fun people can have customizing their phones.


Widgets
Widgets are, essentially, applications for your home screen. They allow you to access information right from the home screen without the need to open any application. For example, a weather widget could be just a tiny cloud on your desktop that displays the current weather of a place you’re interested in. This would be different from a full-blown weather application that might show you forecasts for the entire week of different places in the world. The widget might allow you to get to a more detailed report by clicking on it.

Then there could be a cricket widget that displays the current score of a particular match that you’re interested in. This information would be available on the desktop of your phone just like the time is. You would be able to configure it to pull in the latest score every 15 minutes or so. A full blown cricket application, like a cricinfo one, might show ball by ball commentary of the last over for all current matches, score cards, schedules of other matches, and contain player and team stats.

Widgets make information available right on the home screen. There are widgets for Facebook, Twitter, email, notes, calendar etc. The android developer community and some of the bigger players like HTC and Google are actively developing more and more widgets. Check out some of the top free widgets.

Applications
Apple’s strict and at times unpredictable screening process for applications has frustrated a lot of developers. Also, Apple does not allow applications, which duplicate the functionality provided by the phone itself. This restricts scope of customization. Developers are writing apps for Android at a rapid pace. The number of apps available for the Android will not be any lower than that available for the iPhone for long. Google already counts over 16,000 applications.

Also, with the type of applications available, you can change pretty much everything — from your default phonebook, default messaging application to your onscreen keyboard. Now that’s customization! Check out some of the top free applications.

Though Android devices are gaining traction in the market, currently they’re only attracting enthusiasts who love making phones their own and would download widgets, applications and run multiple programs simultaneously. For these devices to be popular among others as well, they would have to be less confusing to the consumer. There is no ONE android phone. Having to choose from an array of phones can be a daunting task. Especially if you don’t understand what the Android is and what makes one phone different from the other.

On the other hand, the iPhone is one. While trying it out, you’re not exposed to words like “operating system.” It is easier to understand and comes with enough software so that most users do not need to install applications. And do most users really care about being able to change the default onscreen keypad? No!

source:consumermate.com

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