Android 3.0 Honeycomb came out four months ago with the launch of the Motorola Xoom tablet and it was followed by a variety of tablets by several manufacturers. But so far the platform is yet to see a significant growth in the number of applications for it. In comparison, the iPad has racked over 100,000 apps, developed exclusively for it.
So to solve this mystery of the missing apps, Computerworld has been around asking developers regarding this issue and what according to them could be the reason. Read more »
With the hundreds of different Android devices out there, there will always be those who feel they’ve been left out in the cold when the device they bought last year is stuck on last year’s firmware whilst everyone around them appears to be running the latest and greatest.
Two of the most important application stores in the mobile world celebrated important milestones these days. iPad and WP7 smartphone owners both have reasons to celebrate as the tablet App store and Windows market place now have 100,000 and 25,000 apps respectively.
Skype for Android got the video calling feature just two days ago but there were only four handset that could use it: the Samsung Nexus S, HTC Desire S and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia pro and Xperia neo devices.
Well thanks to some hardworking hackers the reach of the Skype video-calls has been greatly extended. You can now enable the feature on the Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Droid Charge, HTC EVO 3D, HTC Sensation and the HTC Thunderbolt plus potentially some other smartphones. Read more »
Yesterday BGR received an open letter by an anonymous high-level RIM employee, address to Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, CEOs of RIM. The employee pulled no punches as he (or she) outlined everything that is currently wrong with RIM and the reason they are losing so badly to Apple and Google.
Among the things that the employee addressed the first was about BlackBerry devices lagging behind Apple’s when it comes to user experience. He also noted that Android devices lacked when it comes to simplicity and elegance and that BlackBerry has the opportunity to build something new and “uniquely BlackBerry” with QNX platform. Read more »
One of the most important parts of Windows Phone 7, its Facebook app, just got an update. Version 2.0 of Facebook finally brings some push notification magic to SNS addicts in the WP7 crowd.
Those are shown as toast notifications (or banners in the top of the device like a pop-up) and live tiles. You can set to be notified for a message, wall post, feed comment, when somebody tags you in a photo, comments on a photo of you, etc. So it’s now a fully functioning Facebook app, save for the missing Facebook chat feature. Read more »
The N950 is the beautifully crafted, but sadly developer only counterpart to Nokia’s latest commercially available MeeGo device, the N9. Running MeeGo Harmattan, the video below gives a detailed look at the UI, along with the dialer, contacts, web browsing, Facebook, the camera settings, turn by turn navigation and a whole host more.
This expansive 17 minute video (in Thai) will get you better acquainted with the device you just can’t have. Read more »
The latest version of Skype is finally out for Android and it brings the long-awaited two-way video calling. You can now make video calls to anyone who is on Skype whether they are on a PC, iPhone or a Mac.
Unfortunately, currently only four handsets are officially supported for video calling and the lucky ones are the Samsung Nexus S, HTC Desire S and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia pro and Xperia neo. Read more »
The Opera Dev team is on a roll. After releasing the latest version of their desktop browser the other day, the company has now updated both of its mobile solutions. Opera Mobile and Opera Mini got their versions 11.1 and 6.1 respectively.
The updates focus on saving you some typing on those smartphone screens. You now get Search suggestions from Google and Yandex, plus smarter domain recognition in this version update. So with the Opera Mini 6.1 and Opera Mobile 11.1 you won’t need to type the whole search query most of the time, just a few letters of it with the automatic suggestions taking care of the rest. Read more »
Under normal circumstances, this statement would have instantly been qualified as a rumor. Not today, folks. According to the CEO of HP, the electronics giant is in talks with “a number of companies” which have expressed interest in obtaining a license to use its WebOS mobile operational system.
To make the matter even more interesting, Read more »
Microsoft has announced the custom ringtones are coming to Windows Phone 7 with the highly anticipated Mango update. And no you haven’t traveled back in time, it’s just that some modern platforms (like iOS and WP7) have been particularly stubborn to allow custom ringtones.
And not only is Windows Phone the only platform slower tha iOS to get the feature, but it will also have restrictions as puzzling as those on the platform that started the touch-revolution. Even the sync process. Read more »
Lawrence Hryb (or just Larry as most know him), the Director of programming for the Microsoft gaming network – Xbox Live, has just announced via Twitter that Angry Birds is available for WP7 users over at the Marketplace.
The game will sell for $2.99, which is a bit steep, but users will have the opportunity to test a few levels for free. Read more »
Google has had several attempts at cracking social networking and it’s fair to say that they weren’t terribly successful (there were lawsuits involved). The latest project, called Google+, however looks like it could be a winner.
After having a quick look at it, it’s a lot like Facebook (as XKCD so eloquently put it) but it also differs from Facebook in some respects. Read more »
You may remember back in December Andy Rubin, Senior VP of Mobile at Google, tweeted that over 300,000 Android phones are getting activated everyday. That was over six months ago and over two years from the launch of Android. But in those six months, the figures have almost doubled and according to his latest tweet, over 500,000 Android phones are getting activated everyday.
The N9 continues to top the worldwide charts for most interesting handset of the month and that’s the way Nokia made it. We waited for the first MeeGo device for nearly two years and now that it’s finally official we can’t keep off it. It’s made to blend in top notch design and innovative build quality with a “fresh out the oven” OS with Nokia’s knowhow of craftsmanship and technology all into one device. A powerful combo indeed.
Now the official Nokia blog – Conversations, is dedicating an article to the new browser of the N9, detailing how it works, how it feels, how it scores and what were the ideas behind it. Nokia-appointed “browser guru” Christian Sejersen shares that the N9′s Meego browser was designed with the idea not to annoy its users and keep out of the way while they are browsing. So the UI is quite minimalistic – much like on an Android powered smartphone. Read more »
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