Archive for: Android
It’s been getting a lot of guff lately. And for what? Because it isn’t a high performance windows vista or XP netbook from one of the top dogs? Because it doesn’t look so great?
This is one ting which bugs me about the tech review scene, they tend to bunch all items into the one category. This isn’t like other netbooks. It’s a budget machine for those who need a quick little gadget that’ll do the job for 2010. Nothing more.
They based the OS on Android, the popular mobile device OS. As you can see from the picture, it’s nothing too flashy and it isn’t too powerful either. But then, all you’re going to be using it for is doing Emails, some light web surfing and maybe using the word processor. It’s not for playing video games or creating home movies for god’s sake.
They’re rugged little machines that’ll suit many individuals. This could easily act as a spare PC for households to cope when people all want to use the family PC at once. Or it could accompany you to work on the train. Or it could be a field laptop for photographers, surveyors etc…. And because of that cool $149 price tag, it doesn’t matter if it gets broken.
At the end of the day, there’s a market for cheap yet reliable machines that’ll do a basic job. So maybe the Hivision netbook is worth a go.
Android phones are taking over. The OS is becoming hugely popular and could very well dethrone Apple, not this year, not next year, but soon. As the only real rival in the market, coming from Google, Android phones are popping up across the various cell phone providers to include T-Mobile and Verizon, and now Android will debut on the AT&T network with the Motorola Backflip.
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I’m a big cinema goer. In fact I go at least twice a week. There’s nothing I love more than chilling with friends in a cool movie theatre as George Clooney works his magic. Checking times is something that always gets on my grapes though.
Now, for all Android users, you can download a free app called Fandango which enables you to do just that; check movie times at any cinema.
This is just a few weeks after they put out a Beta release before Christmas.
What I liked most about this app was how it integrates so well with Android phones such as the Nexus One. For example, it uses the phone’s GPS to find nearby movie theatres and automatically downloads their screening times.
Furthermore, you can also watch movie trailers, get reviews and even buy tickets at selected cinemas. The app also has a community whereby everyone is asked to rate a movie they’ve seen already to tell fellow users what’s how and what’s not.
Definitely a must have for hardcore movie buffs! You can find it here.
The mobile web has been around for quite some time. It’s earliest form was accessed using primitive mobiles using GPRS. Early Blackberries at the turn of the millennium played their part in increasing its popularity and relevance. Still however, the computer remained the best way to access the web. However, since the iPhone revolutionised the way we think about mobile web, its usage has more than doubled in one year.
2009 saw an increase of more than 110% in mobile web usage. This is undoubtedly due to the rush of smart phones onto the market such as the iPhone, Android devices and new Blackberries. Apple dominates each continental market except for Africa where cheaper GPRS phones still rule. In fact, Apple had a 65% share of the market at the end of 2009 with their iPhone and iPod Touch.
Android is the number two player in the US and has been growing in dominance since late 2008 when they launched on HTC phones. Towards the end of 2009, Android also seen a spike when their Motorola devices went on sale. They currently have around 12% of the North American market.
2010 may see the mobile web take off as Google prepare to launch their own smart phone and the scramble for consumers to get more up to date phones begins as the world climbs out of recession.
Over a year after a third-party app was released for Yammer users with an Android, Yammer have decided it’s time to release their own official app to compliment their service which enables people working within a company or group to send updates as to what they’re doing which is fed into a constant stream, like Twitter.
The app can be ran in the background while you use the phone on a day to day basis. It will vibrate or make a noise when the stream is updated by a colleague answering the boilerplate Yammer question, ‘What are you doing?’
The pre-release version is still reported to contain many bugs and I doubt it will be ready until late Spring of next year.
I think that this app will make switching from the iPhone to cheaper android devices much easier. Many people depend on Apple’s device purely because of the apps – now with many alternatives in the hands of the competitors, the iPhone could be in trouble. Expect a price drop in early 2010.
Within the first 24 hours after jack Dorsey (Twitter co-founder) launched his new product called Square, he is already getting a lot of mixed press.
What is Square?
Square is a magnetic card reader that plugins into the headphone jack of an iPhone. Gigaom explains it as:
A credit card (or a debit card) is swiped through the reader, it reads the data and converts it into an audio signal. The microphone picks up the audio, sends it through the processors and then is routed to Square’s software application on the iPhone. From there the encrypted data is transmitted using either Wi-Fi (for iPod touch) or a 3G Internet connection to back-end severs, which in turn communicate with the payment networks to complete the transactions.
No information is stores on the iPhone or ont he device, plus Square is able to work on any device: Android, Blackberry, Symbian and even computers. “As long as we have software on that device, our reader works,” said Dorsey. Square basically makes any iPhone the equivalent to a $900 wireless credit card terminal.
Our thoughts so far!
Other press sources are reporting that Square is already worth $40 million on the day of launch. However, I think this number is very low! I can see this product has a lot of potential and can be adopted very easily. However, it has a huge amount of limitations. If Square gets mass adoption then the card companies like Visa and Mastercard could easily just develop their own similar product, and maybe even work out a way to block Square from accepting their cards. Additionally, established customers will already be tied into long term contracts with other merchants
Whats your thoughts on Square?
Other reports
Gigaom – Jack Dorsey on Square, How It Works & Why It Disrupts
Switched – Twitter Co-Founder Launches Square, the iPod-Ready Payment System
The Inquistr – Am I The Only Person Not Excited About Square?
Techcrunch – Square Worth $40 Million Before Launch
LG has just had its first stab at a smartphone and it is even running on Googles Android operating system, its call the GW620. Previously we have profiled lots of Android based phones on Crenk, such as the HTC Tattoo and even the G2.The GW620 combines a physical QWERTY keyboard and a touchscreen so that it appeals to both the business and consumer markets.
The screen measures three inches, and though LG doesn’t say this in its official press release, word on the street is that this phone has a 5-megapixel camera. Not shabby. We don’t have any other details yet, except that the GW620 will launch in “select European markets” — definitely including Germany — sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.
Google Labs, as we said it many times, represent’s Google’s sandbox where they can try a lot of new technologies, and also sharing them with the globe. And if we talk about Google and new technologies we can always be amazed, and I guess this one it’s not the exception: Google Listen will provide audio search within th web, but wait, it is only available for Android (just for now I hope).
You can search, subscribe, download and strem podcasts and audio around the web. Interesting thing about this Android’s app: by subscribing to programs you will create a personalized audio-magazine.You can download Google Listen for your Adroid device from here.
You can see it like this:
Google Listen Home Page
The audio search is only available in English. And remember, this app belongs to Google Labs, so you should expect some bugs or lack of stability.
Also I’ve noticed that the Google Listen home page hasn’t been all that “available” in the last few days.
Spotify is undoubtedly one of the fastest growing music and entertainment services on the internet today. And as with all good services they have decided that it’s time for more Apps. They recently announced that they would be releasing an App for android devices similar to those for the iPhones.
This would allow users to access their Spotify accounts easily from their android devices. However, they have a competitor.
“I can’t believe it’s not Spotify” has just launched and is taking on a lot of users as they wait for the official app to be released. It packs much of the same features as what we expect in the official version but lacks in one – offline playback. However, the developers say that this may come later if it continues to grow in popularity.
While I can’t see this app lasting as people tend to veer towards products with an official stamp on them, I can definitely see its use at the present. The developers deserve their time in the limelight because they plugged a gap in the market. But soon the official app will push them out with no really effort.
Google’s mobile platform Android is taking off very quickly. Multiple phone makers are picking up on the OS because of is functionality and features. Now, HTC have come out of the OD closet and stated that by 2010 over half of their phones will use the popular OS. This follows the Android success of their previous phones the G1 Magic and the Hero.
They have also announced that a new phone coming out in a couple of month’s time in either September or October which will be based on the Qualcommis platform from Brew mobile. While they may be stepping away from the Android OS for a little while I’m sure that they are busy as beavers behind the scenes working closely with Google and their Android platform.
The developers of mobile phones actually quite like the Android platform as it’s extremely easy to work with. Because Android takes care of the look and feel of the phone developers just have to give it their own little twist instead of starting from scratch with themes, user functions and then get on to the programs.
Previously we have written a lot about Android phones, most recently how Nokia denied doing an android phone. However, we have now received reports that the HTC Click is Android powered. The HTC Click is a supposedly low-end Android device and the second one after HTC Hero to have no Google branding on it.
Less is known about this new Android beauty but from the looks of it, it won’t feature a trackball rather a D-pad for navigation and also we see rocker-key arrangement which is also found on the HTC Hero. It will probably also feature the HTC Sense UI found in the HTC Hero and will be released somewhere between September to October this year.
Looking at the device we can assume that HTC plans to sell it as a budget phone as the device does not feature anything unique or extraordinary (or maybe it does, who knows?) but it really pleases us that HTC is making use of Android more on its handsets than Windows Mobile.
