Samsung to unveil Android smartwatch Sept. 4 · LinuxGizmos.com. A Samsung executive confirmed to The Korea Times that it will unveil its Galaxy Gear smartwatch on Sept. 4, along with the Galaxy Note 3 phablet, but quashed rumors of a flexible display. The Android-powered smartwatch, rumored to include a dual-core processor and a camera, will be the first of many Samsung and Apple smartwatches that will lead a surging 36 million unit a year market by 2018, predicts Juniper Research.
Earlier this year, Samsung said it was working on a smartwatch, but offered no details. Now, after several weeks of rumors and leaks, the company has confirmed the Galaxy Gear name, as well as its expected unveiling on Sept. 4. In an interview with The Korea Times, Monday, Lee Young-hee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, said that while the Galaxy Gear won’t have a rumored flexible display, the watch computer “will enhance and enrich the current smart mobile experience in many ways.”
Beating the iWatch to market. Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux · LinuxGizmos.com. SolidRun refreshed its line of tiny 2 x 2 x 2-inch mini-PCs with four new community-backed models based on 1.2GHz multi-core Freescale i.MX6 SoCs. The CuBox-i devices run Android 4.2.2 and Linux, offer HDMI, S/PDIF, IR, eSATA, GbE, USB, WiFi, and Bluetooth interfaces (depending on model), and are currently available for pre-order starting at $45. The CuBox-i mini-PCs look to replace the earlier CuBox and CuBox Pro models, which cost $120 and $160, respectively, and ran on a Marvell Armada 510 system-on-chip.
The four new CuBox-i models advance to Freescale’s Cortex-A9-based i.MX6 SoC, which is also used in mini-PCs including the Utilite from fellow Israeli firm CompuLab. A wide range of potential applications are said to include use as a desktop replacement, presentation device, digital signage system, and XBMC-based media center. SolidRun’s tiny CuBox-i mini-PC (click images to enlarge) Block diagrams: CuBox-i mini-PC and its i.MX6 SoC (click image to enlarge) Sony Xperia P hands-on. Without revealing the rhyme or reason behind its seemingly arbitrary Xperia naming convention, Sony's newly minted Mobile Communications arm unveiled its middle ground NXT series entry, the P, at this evening's MWC event.
Occupying a space firmly between the S and U, this 4-inch handset boasts a company first -- that WhiteMagic display tech -- while incorporating the better known hardware elements of its older stablemate. With that signature aluminum unibody design, transparent bar and NFC-capabilities, this Android handset is poised to usher a whole new crop of smartphone users into the company's wireless folds. We spent some up close and personal time with the unit, so click on past the break to see whether this phone suffers from middle child syndrome or truly shines on its own. Sony Xperia P hands-on See all photos 23 Photos Unlike the instant impressiveness imparted by the S, this handset skews more average-to-normal where its combination metal-plastic build is concerned. Comments. Record-breaking 1.2B iOS and Android apps downloaded during holiday week. New and bored smartphone owners alike went on a download spree last week, with a record-breaking 1.2 billion iOS and Android apps downloaded between Dec. 25th and 31st.
The staggering number of apps downloaded, courtesy of analytics firm Flurry, goes hand-in-hand with the report that 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day. Naturally, many new owners of these smartphones downloaded all kinds of games and apps to make their smartphone experience more useful and entertaining, with 242 million apps downloaded on Christmas. With those two reports together, the week from Dec 25th through the 31st set new records for number of smartphone activations and total number of apps downloaded.
Flurry specifically estimates 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated. The company believes 1.2 billion apps were downloaded, which is a 60 percent increase from the first full week of December. Unwrapping Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy Nexus. (Cross-posted on the Google Mobile blog) Beaming a video with a single tap or unlocking a device with only a smile sounds like science fiction. Now, you can actually do these things (and more) with a phone that fits in the palm of your hand. Wednesday morning in Hong Kong—together with Samsung—we unveiled Galaxy Nexus, the first phone designed for the latest release of Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich. With a super slim profile, Galaxy Nexus features a 4.65” Contour Display with true high definition (720p) resolution and a lightning-fast dual core 1.2ghz processor combined with 4G LTE or HSPA+ technology.
Galaxy Nexus also features the latest in software: Ice Cream Sandwich makes Android simple and beautiful, and takes the smartphone to beyond smart. Beauty and simplicity With Ice Cream Sandwich, our mission was to build a mobile OS that works on both phones and tablets, and to make the power of Android enticing and intuitive. Australian Android sales eclipse iPhone for the first time: Report. Google’s Android mobile operating system overtook sales of Apple’s iPhone for the first time in Australia, accounting for 42.9 percent of smartphones sold in the country compared to Apple’s 37.2 percent share, according to a new report by Kantar ComTech WorldPanel. New product launches by HTC and Samsung are thought to have boosted sales, with Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC’s Desire S, Desire Z and Incredible S smartphones launching recently in the country.
Taking into account the last four weeks alone, Android sales accounted for 54 percent of sales in the country, compared with Apple’s 29 percent share, suggesting consumers in Australia are beginning to take advantage of the varying selection of Android handsets available across varying price points. Growth of the sales Australia have now begun to mirror Western Europe and North America as a result. Google Maps 5.7 for Android introduces Transit Navigation (Beta) and more. (Cross-posted on the Google Lat Long Blog and the Google Mobile Blog) Today we’re releasing Google Maps 5.7 for Android.
From Bangkok to Baltimore, we’ve added Transit Navigation (Beta), updated access to directions, better suggested search results and a photo viewer to Place pages—all of which can help you whether you’re traveling to an unfamiliar part of town or visiting a city across the world. Transit Navigation (Beta)Google Maps Navigation (Beta) currently provides over 12 billion miles of GPS-guided driving and walking directions per year. Now, GPS turn-by-turn (or in this case, stop-by-stop) navigation is available for public transit directions in 400+ cities around the globe with Transit Navigation.
Transit Navigation uses GPS to determine your current location along your route and alerts you when it’s time to get off or make a transfer. Left: Transit directions without Navigation. Navigation alerts appear even if you switch to another app Left: Business photos in Place pages. Google Android 3.0 "Honeycomb": Open source no more. In a disappointing move, Google has restricted access to the tablet-oriented version of Android, also known as Honeycomb. Version 3.0 of Android, which many have called a fork of the mobile OS (and now it looks like they were right), is now closed source, with access only going to OEMs and specific developers.
While Google claims that they don't want people experimenting with the OS on smartphones for which it wasn't designed, one has to wonder if there aren't other motivations for the move. According to BusinessWeek, ...throngs of smaller hardware makers and software developers that will now have to wait for the software.
A shortcut that certainly goes to the heart of whether Android truly is "open source. " Android is frequently compared to Microsoft Windows when PC clones took off and hardware simply became a commodity. Google claims they wanted to avoid having developers create a bad user experience. I'm a big Android fan. Malware in Android Market highlights Google's vulnerability. Google has removed 21 applications from the Android Market after it was discovered that the apps secretly installed malware. The applications themselves included pirated and renamed versions of legitimate Android software that had been modified to include the malware and then offered for free on the Market.
Together, the 21 programs received more than 50,000 downloads over the course of about four days. The malicious applications sent personal details, including the phone's unique IMEI number, to a US-based server. Worse, it exploited security flaws to root the phone, and installed a backdoor application that allows further software to be installed to the handsets. Though Google has now purged the applications from the Market, the rooting and backdoor mean that the anyone who has run one of the malicious programs should reset their phone to stock conditions to clean it up. Application piracy is again an issue found on Apple's platform as well as Google's.
Google's first Honeycomb Android tablet, SDK debut. Google's much anticipated Android 3.0 software development kit was made available yesterday and the first tablet based upon it is is due to ship on Thursday Feb 24, the company announced. Android 3.0, also dubbed Honeycomb and previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show last month, is targeted at tablets. Google super developer Tim Bray posted an update on the Honeycomb release today, noting that this version of Android differs from the phone version in two ways. "The new environment is different from what we’re used to in two respects.
First, you can hold the devices with any of the four sides up and Honeycomb manages the rotation properly. "The second big difference doesn’t have anything to do with software; it’s that a lot of people are going to hold these things horizontal (in “landscape mode”) nearly all the time.
Internals. Security.