News tagged ‘Android’

As you remember, this Thursday Steve Jobs wrote a letter about his thoughts on Flash. In responce to such a public attack Adobe decided to give its employees mobile phones running on Android OS which support Flash.

CNet reports it has information from three sources close to Adobe that the company is going to give Android phones, but the exact model is not specified yet (though HTC phones and Google Nexus One were mentioned). There is also no information about whether Adobe is going to give devices to all 8,600 employees or just to developers.

Flash 10.1 will be presented in May at Google's I/O conference. Every its attendee will receive Motorola Droid or Nexus One from Google.

Several web-resources including Gizmodo and TechCrunch confirmed that HP stops working on its "HP Slate" tablet device. The decision is caused by this week's deal that will end soon with acquiring Palm. Now Hewlett-Packard is rumored to integrate Palm's WebOS instead Microsoft WIndows in their tablet (which can take a year or more) and reconsider using Intel-based hardware in it because of its excessive power requirements.

So now it looks like HP changes it course and is going to convert webOS to a tablet OS and compete with Google's Android and Chrome on the market of operational systems.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has also cancelled working on its own booklet-style tablet device called "Courier". Gizmodo sources say the project will be no longer supported. Anyway, the device had never been publicly announced, though it could be very interesting with its two touch-sensitive screens in a foldable format and handwriting recognition input.

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal reported that this year Apple is going to charge companies 1$ million for iAds on its mobile devices. Citing an unknown but reliable source familiar with the matter those companies that want to become a part of the iAds launch will pay $10 million to be first in the door.

The pricing policy of iAds is pretty simple. Every time user sees an ad the advertiser is charged a penny. If he's tapping the banner, Apple charges $2. So $1 million ad buy will provoke a big amount of its views and user taps.

In addition to a higher price Apple wants to take more control over marketing campaigns of its clients. But still it doesn't reduce companies' interest in iAds:

"Despite the high price, ad executives at agencies from Boston to New York and San Francisco to Los Angeles have crowded into conference rooms in recent weeks to listen to the tech company's pitch for iAd".

One of the advertisements that is already developed is an ad for Nike's Air Jordan basketball shoes. It includes iAd logo and animated banner. If you select it, you'll see an interactive store locator, special videoclip and exclusive offers taking place at local stores. This iAd was also shown by Apple on its iPhone OS 4 preview event.

Some experts think Apple's appearance at the market of mobile advertisement may convince some other selling ads companies to switch to other mobile platforms (for example, Google Android).

With a growing popularity of apps for Apple devices advertisers and developers see iAds as a potential opportunity to reach a wide audience and raise more money on it.

Android phones have an advantage over Apple's iPhone in navigation, because Google includes their free nice Navigation program, while Apple doesn't have built in navigation in Maps. Here are some good news for iPhone users:

Google confirmed at a London press conference that it plans to bring free satnav to other smartphone platforms, including the iPhone, although it wouldn’t say when.

Unlike TomTom or iGo software, Google’s satnav software doesn’t store maps on the device but downloads them on-demand from the internet. However "Google Maps pre-caches the entire route," said Mobile Maps product manager, Steve Lee. "It needs a data connection when you ask for navigation. But while driving to your destination, if you intermittently lose the connection, it will still carry on. As long as you stay on the route."

Users can choose from several viewing options: standard maps and directions, satellite view and access to Street View, plus live traffic data. Sound like a good deal.

The same guy who two years ago ported Linux 2.6 kernel to the iPhone has yesterday posted a video of Adroid OS running on iPhone. He is a member of iPhone Dev-team and his nickname is Planetbeing.

What is more important, Android has been ported to iPhone with ability to choose what OS you'd like to work with on a boot. This was achieved by OpeniBoot bootloader, which is also developed by Planetbeing.

As it can be understood from the video, this is the alpha-version of Android for iPhone though most of the functions (such as playing music, making calls, browsing Internet) are working fine. The volume buttons serve as the "home" and "call" buttons.

Planetbeing has also posted image that can be downloaded here, but he also states this version works fine only with iPhone 2G. Porting to iPhone 3G must be simple, but there may be problems with delivering Android to iPhone 3GS.

And we're back now with a new e-mail reply by Steve Jobs, received from a TechCrunch reader. He was interested why Apple doesn't apply parental control to apps released in AppStore but simply denies accepting it. Jobs' answer was suddenly long, and he recommended to buy an Android-based phone.

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It seem like Apple have always been concentrated on Macs and iPhones/iPods/iPads, so their Apple TV product may be considered more like a hobby. But the company's main rival thinks of  it as of another field to work on.

Intel, Sony and Google created a team to work on the device called GoogleTV. The latter already has its prototype. The New York Times says it consists of Intel's Atom processor and Android OS with Chrome web-browser. The project has been under development for a few months and there is still a work to do, but preliminary the device will be introduced this summer. To test their set-top box Google cooperates with Dish Network.

The NYT's source say:

“Google wants to be everywhere the Internet is so they can put ads there.”

It sounds plausible, because GoogleTV device is planned to allow users to browse the Internet, watch YouTube videos, check out Hulu content and even run Web apps and games.

Since the iPad SDK became publicly available January 27 there were more than 2,000 apps released in App Store. The mobile metrix firm Flurry analyzed some facts and made a conclusion: in comparison to December the number of new iPhone OS apps released in February is more than 185% higher. Most of them are customized versions of the apps released for iPhone/iPod Touch earlier.

Flurry said that iPad allowed AppStore to gain more apps and increase the distance between it and its biggest rival Android's Market Place.

For the last few months we have been witnessing the competition between Google and Apple that becomes more and more significant. We tried to analyze some facts and made a conclusion that the confrontation is more personal than corporate.

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After the news about Apple's lawsuit many of us have been wondering why Apple did this. Obviously, the thing is not about money as the company already has $40 billion of cash and investments. Digital Daily's editor John Paczkowski thinks the reason is a desire to extend iPhone's growing lead on the market.

"Apple is suing to make an example out of HTC and lengthen the engineering time-to-market for Android handset builders."

While other Android smartphone manufacturers will spend their time solving a problem with developing of noninfringing technologies to avoid lawsuits, Apple will continue to iterate the iPhone.

Ok, this is clear, but why Apple accused HTC now?

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The Wall St. Journal published a small article about Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen's talk at the Goldman Sachs technology conference this week. Adobe's CEO spoke on his view of why the iPad wasn't equipped to play Flash:

Narayen said Apple's decision likely had everything to do with its business model as it tries to keep a proprietary, closed system so everything goes through its iTunes store, and has nothing to do with the Flash technology. He said about 85 of the top 100 Web sites in the world use Flash, and 75% of the video on the Web today is in Flash, including Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube, News Corp.'s (NWS) Hulu and broadcasters such as ABC and Fox.

Flash will be on every Android device sold at the end of the year. It will also be on Nokias, Palm Pres, Windows Mobile, Blackberries and just about anything else with an ARM Cortex processor. Not to mention 98% of all the Macs and PCs (and Windows/ChomeOS Tablets) throughout the world. It looks like Apple has it's own vision of what is good and bad for the business.

An interesting fact was revealed by Admob Mobile Metrics when they ran an opt-in surveys on iPhone, iPod Touch, webOS and Android devices to understand how they are engaging and interacting with applications.

As you see on the photos below, it becomes obvious that iPod Touch is more popular for teenagers. Moreover, as latter are mostly supported by their parents, they use these devices differently, and that is why the number of free downloads is so high for iPod Touch users.

Apparently, iPods make a high profit to Apple, but is this so because of children?

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The annual Pwn2Own hacking contest is coming up next month. During the event competitors will be given the chance to win cash prizes.

The competition will start on March 24 at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. This year, hackers will take on an iPhone 3GS, a Blackberry Bold 9700, an unspecified Nokia smartphone running the Symbian S60 platform and a Motorola, most likely a Droid, powered by Google 's Android. A successful hack must result in code execution with little to no user-interaction. Any exploited phone wins its attacker $10,000 in cash.

Opera Software company just announced that it plans to show Opera Mini browser for iPhone during the Mobile World Congress 2010 (MWC).

"We are thrilled to offer journalists and partners an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for iPhone during the year’s biggest mobile event,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software. “This is a unique opportunity to introduce the fast, feature-rich Opera Mini experience for the iPhone, and to showcase our latest beta releases of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on other platforms and devices. Opera’s mission is to bring the Web to the world, and by making Opera Mini available on yet another platform, we are one step closer."

But remember that Apple would never allow alternative browsers that are not based on WebKit. So what's the point of all this? A Cydia Store release? The real intent might be to draw attention to Opera's Mobile and Mini browsers running on other platforms where the software is actually released like Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Android.

Google released a software update for Android-based Nexus One smartphones. The update offers a number of enhancements, but the most interesting one is a support of the multi-touch technology in phone's Browser, Gallery and Maps applications. The new functionality is called "pinch-to-zoom".

Google previously had an agreement with Apple, that Android OS would not support multi-touch in the U.S. Now it looks like all the agreements are gone.

Engadget posted a video of the Nexus One's pinch-to-zoom functionality: