While the industry puzzles over when Android-supported phones will hit shelves, it is unclear what impact, if any, it will have against growing iPhone adoption.
Google-led Android doesn’t quite get the hype that Apple’s iPhone does, but there are plenty of reasons to get excited for it. For one, Android’s OS looks to offer a lot more than iPhone can with its latest release.
Here are five reasons to buy your loved one an Android-operated phone rather than an iPhone for Christmas:
1. It promises to run on most modern smart phones - More cell networks will support Android than iPhone does — the iPhone is bound to just AT&T. Mobile providers NTT DoCoMo, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and more have committed to the project. Also, more handsets will operate on it. You might even get more life out of your old phone if it supports it. Handset manufactures HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung have already signed on.
2. It’s open-source software - Any programmer can whip up some code to match popular features from any other phone. Under the Apache license, any programmer can take the code and port their own version of the OS.
3. It has support for Google products out of the box - The latest Android demonstration displayed the phone’s compass prominently in Google Maps. You can bet Google will have the latest and greatest features of their software running on Android before it hits other operators.
4. Third-party developers have more access - iPhone prohibits people from using its internet capabilities for things like VoIP or an alternative browser. Android’s API allows you to create an application for anything, even the dialing software. The evidence is in the 50 applications already developed for the Android Developer Challenge last May.
5. Android allows for ‘unlocked’ phones - Most handsets in America, including the iPhone, are locked by software to a cell phone provider’s network. While there are various ways to jailbreak, it’s not easy and might break your terms of service. The availability of downloading and installing your own unlocked OS might just change the game in respect to shopping for mobile phone providers and signing contracts. If this method gets more popular, it is conceivable phone networks may drop the contracts in lieu of (better) European pre-pay pricing.
Apple proved when they launched the OS X powered iPhones, it isn’t just hardware that drives the killer mobile devices that change the industry. From what we can gather from Android, Google gets it too.
Source: WebMonkey
Friday, July 18, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Enkin Video, Android App
"Enkin" introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services, and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices.
Check out our web page enkin.net.
Check out our web page enkin.net.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Android Scan
New Android App
Android Developer Challenge submission by Jeffrey Sharkey
Android Scan is one of the 50 winners of the Android Developer Challenge, more details to be released on Monday. I'll also be at Google I/O later this month.
Scan is an Android application that finds pricing and metadata for anything with a barcode. Here are some key features that make Scan stand out:
- Automatic barcode recognition using onboard phone camera using ZXing library
- Shows CD, DVD, or book cover along with detailed reviews from Amazon.com
- Searches over a dozen stores, both online and brick+mortar
- Highlights brick+mortar stores that are nearby, with option to call the store or get directions
- Links to online storefronts to buy online from the phone
- Tracklisting for CDs, along with option to play sample tracks right on phone
- For books, searches local libraries to see if they have a copy
Watch the quick 3-minute video that shows the power of Scan in action with real barcodes:
Video Here http://scan.jsharkey.org/
This looks very interesting!
More info at the link. http://scan.jsharkey.org/
Thursday, April 24, 2008
T-Mobile Android Phone Release Seen Bringing 'Avalanche'
preparing to ship out its first cellphones built on
Android platform later this year, wireless carriers are expecting an avalanche
of innovation from users - and radical changes to what customers expect and
demand.
But some disagree on where start-ups should focus their efforts if they aim to
make money in this fast-changing landscape.
At the Wireless Innovations 2008 conference in Redwood City, Calif., sponsored
by Dow Jones & Co.,
broadband and new business division, said he had already seen prototypes of the
company's Android-based phone, which are scheduled to ship in this year's final
quarter.
(This story also appeared in Venture Wire, a newsletter published by Dow Jones
& Co. that covers the venture-capital industry.)
"I'm impressed," he said. "We will have more than one product...(The move to
an open platform) will be innovation across the board, not just one device."
T-Mobile, like other carriers, was leery of
platform that the search giant was pushing seemed radical and untested, Sims
said. T-Mobile is now a part of
Like T-Mobile,
Choudhury,
technologies. "But we got over that hurdle when we saw the use-case models,"
Choudhury said. "The Web-browsing, the taking and uploading of pictures."
Choudhury said he expects big changes to happen fast once the Android phones
get into consumers' hands. Nedim Fresko, director of strategic platform
initiatives at Blackberry maker
Mobile's release would be a "wake-up call for innovation."
But conference panelists differed on what areas of mobile technology - video
distribution, social networking, enterprise or entertainment - were likely to
heat up first.
"Security is the issue," Fresko said. "People want secure, managed and safe"
networks.
John Smelzer, a senior vice president and manager of
Entertainment Group Inc.'s interactive media division, said photo and video
distribution would be the "next killer app."
Jones Newswires.
Fox isn't immediately interested in moving social networks to mobile, Smelzer
said, but it sees great potential in start-ups working on applications that
replicate the broader online experience on handsets - for instance, middleware
companies, content aggregators, ad distributors and companies working on
encoding and transcoding data.
Subscription-based video has served Fox well, Smelzer said, and the company
plans to continue that model as networks and handsets move toward openness.
"For the long tail, we think it will be mobile Web," he said.
T-Mobile says all of its offerings will be tailored to the consumer, and the
consumer, in turn, will tell the carriers what they expect their mobile devices
to be able to do.
Panelists agreed that the major, inevitable changes in the next few years
won't be top-down changes, but will be a response from carriers to consumers,
who are going mobile in ever greater numbers and learning to expect much more
from their phones. In addition, they said, the time is ripe for innovators and
start-ups to deliver what consumers want in new, possibly lucrative ways.
"The college kids out there have all the ingredients, finally," said
senior vice president of Korean cellular service provider
"It's so easy and cheap for these kids to start new ventures," Kah said. "VCs
ought to look at very early-stage (companies), but the real winners (will be)
those that stick around a few years."
-By
[Via: Cnn.com]
Thursday, April 3, 2008
AT&T Will Sell Google's 'Android' Phone
And a 3G version of the iPhone is coming within months...
AT&T Wireless Boss Ralph de la Vega says that AT&T will be selling phones based on Google's Android operating system, but only after the baby bell executive was assured the telco wouldn't be forced to offer all-Google applications. "If it's good for customers we'll offer it like any other OS," says de la Vega. The wireless boss also confirmed longstanding rumors that a second generation, HSDPA-supported iPhone would be arriving within months.
First generation iPhone users shouldn't be too sad -- while far from the same thing (particularly in terms of latency), EDGE network upgrades are in the works that could more than double existing speeds. Still, with technophiles flooding to the new versions, expect a fire sale on used first generation iPhones shortly.
Via[BBR.com]
Technorati Tags: AT&T google, google phone, google apps
AT&T Wireless Boss Ralph de la Vega says that AT&T will be selling phones based on Google's Android operating system, but only after the baby bell executive was assured the telco wouldn't be forced to offer all-Google applications. "If it's good for customers we'll offer it like any other OS," says de la Vega. The wireless boss also confirmed longstanding rumors that a second generation, HSDPA-supported iPhone would be arriving within months.
First generation iPhone users shouldn't be too sad -- while far from the same thing (particularly in terms of latency), EDGE network upgrades are in the works that could more than double existing speeds. Still, with technophiles flooding to the new versions, expect a fire sale on used first generation iPhones shortly.
Via[BBR.com]
Technorati Tags: AT&T google, google phone, google apps
Monday, March 17, 2008
Google Android port turns phones into webservers
Webtide has announced a port of its open source Jetty webserver to the Android mobile phone platform. The i-Jetty technology allows mobile phone users to set up AJAX- and Comet-enabled websites on their Android phones for access via desktop PCs over the web, says Webtide.
Jetty is a lightweight, open source webserver implemented in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license. Webtide is the principle maintenance developer for the software, it said.
Jetty is designed to work as a standalone webserver or as a dynamic content server behind a dedicated HTTP server such as Apache. The Android-based i-Jetty version is loaded as a servlet on Android, says Webtide. Once loaded, it enables remote access to phone functions from desktop PCs.
The i-Jetty port to the Android open source software stack for mobile devices is billed primarily as a matter of convenience for cell phone users, who can use it to make calls from their PCs, or to access phone-based content such as address books and calendars using a familiar browser interface. According to Webtide, users will be able to view, create, and save changes to files from remote PCs, including address lists, system settings, call logs, and multimedia files.
Two years ago, Nokia touted similar benefits when it ported Apache to Symbian with its Raccoon project. So far, there has been little evidence of major developer support for Raccoon, yet with mobile phones far outnumbering PCs, the potential for changing the nature and scope of the web is intriguing.
Beyond convenience, Nokia promoted the Raccoon technology as something of a paradigm shifter for the web, especially for mobile webcam-based website projects or for personal web servers. In particular, said Nokia, the amount of personal information stored on mobile phones makes it easy to "semi-automatically generate a personal home page." Other applications touted by Nokia included finding the location of other mobile web sites in the proximity, mobile weblogs, and IM messaging.
i-Jetty users can also build publicly accessible mobile web servers said Adam Lieber, CEO of Webtide, in an interview. In fact, he said, the potential might be greater with i-Jetty compared to Nokia's technology. "I-Jetty is more of a full-featured Java application server as opposed to being just a page server," he said. For example, i-Jetty supports web services technologies such as AJAX (asynchronous Javascript and XML), which speeds up interactive processes on AJAX-enabled applications like Google Maps.
Beyond mobile phones: routers with webservers
Yet, mobile phones are not sufficiently powerful for most web-serving applications, Lieber noted. "Right now, the devices still don't have the processing power and connection speed to handle more than a small population of users," he said, quickly adding, "i-Jetty-enabled Android phones could certainly syndicate to a larger landed service."
A potentially larger new market could emerge, said Lieber, if Android takes hold in larger-format devices such as network routers. "Android-based networking devices such as routers and access points could host web-based services," he said.
A month-old blog from Chief Engineer Jan Bartel reveals some of the project's final struggles in making the port. According to Lieber, however, the porting process was "really fast" compared to typical ports to commercial Java servers. "Android is much more adaptable to projects like this. Instead of, okay, you can add your server to our application, it's like we'll adapt our environment to your server." The biggest challenge, said Lieber, was in "getting used to the Android emulators."
According to Lieber, the code is stable enough for productive use now. "It's posted, it's freely available, and it's good to go now," he said. One potential area for improvement will occur, he added, if Google decides to enable "dynamic adding of Java classes in runtime" in the next Android release. "Right now, there are a couple facilities that are not available in Android, but we're hopeful that they will make the change so more Java components can be added into an application while it's running," he said.
Availability
i-Jetty is now available for free download at Google Code. Webtide is demonstrating the technology this week at Eclipse.con 2008 in Santa Clara, Calif.
[Via LinuxDevices]
Jetty is a lightweight, open source webserver implemented in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license. Webtide is the principle maintenance developer for the software, it said.
Jetty is designed to work as a standalone webserver or as a dynamic content server behind a dedicated HTTP server such as Apache. The Android-based i-Jetty version is loaded as a servlet on Android, says Webtide. Once loaded, it enables remote access to phone functions from desktop PCs.
The i-Jetty port to the Android open source software stack for mobile devices is billed primarily as a matter of convenience for cell phone users, who can use it to make calls from their PCs, or to access phone-based content such as address books and calendars using a familiar browser interface. According to Webtide, users will be able to view, create, and save changes to files from remote PCs, including address lists, system settings, call logs, and multimedia files.
Two years ago, Nokia touted similar benefits when it ported Apache to Symbian with its Raccoon project. So far, there has been little evidence of major developer support for Raccoon, yet with mobile phones far outnumbering PCs, the potential for changing the nature and scope of the web is intriguing.
Beyond convenience, Nokia promoted the Raccoon technology as something of a paradigm shifter for the web, especially for mobile webcam-based website projects or for personal web servers. In particular, said Nokia, the amount of personal information stored on mobile phones makes it easy to "semi-automatically generate a personal home page." Other applications touted by Nokia included finding the location of other mobile web sites in the proximity, mobile weblogs, and IM messaging.
i-Jetty users can also build publicly accessible mobile web servers said Adam Lieber, CEO of Webtide, in an interview. In fact, he said, the potential might be greater with i-Jetty compared to Nokia's technology. "I-Jetty is more of a full-featured Java application server as opposed to being just a page server," he said. For example, i-Jetty supports web services technologies such as AJAX (asynchronous Javascript and XML), which speeds up interactive processes on AJAX-enabled applications like Google Maps.
Beyond mobile phones: routers with webservers
Yet, mobile phones are not sufficiently powerful for most web-serving applications, Lieber noted. "Right now, the devices still don't have the processing power and connection speed to handle more than a small population of users," he said, quickly adding, "i-Jetty-enabled Android phones could certainly syndicate to a larger landed service."
A potentially larger new market could emerge, said Lieber, if Android takes hold in larger-format devices such as network routers. "Android-based networking devices such as routers and access points could host web-based services," he said.
A month-old blog from Chief Engineer Jan Bartel reveals some of the project's final struggles in making the port. According to Lieber, however, the porting process was "really fast" compared to typical ports to commercial Java servers. "Android is much more adaptable to projects like this. Instead of, okay, you can add your server to our application, it's like we'll adapt our environment to your server." The biggest challenge, said Lieber, was in "getting used to the Android emulators."
According to Lieber, the code is stable enough for productive use now. "It's posted, it's freely available, and it's good to go now," he said. One potential area for improvement will occur, he added, if Google decides to enable "dynamic adding of Java classes in runtime" in the next Android release. "Right now, there are a couple facilities that are not available in Android, but we're hopeful that they will make the change so more Java components can be added into an application while it's running," he said.
Availability
i-Jetty is now available for free download at Google Code. Webtide is demonstrating the technology this week at Eclipse.con 2008 in Santa Clara, Calif.
[Via LinuxDevices]
Friday, March 14, 2008
Android Will Outsell iPhone
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has not released sales predictions for devices based on its mobile operating system Android. But that doesn't stop Rich Miner, group manager for mobile platforms at the search giant, from being confident.
After his presentation on Thursday at the Emerging Communications Conference at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, Miner said he expects Android-based devices to outpace sales of the popular iPhone.
"Once you have devices out there from Motorola (NYSE: MOT), HTC, Samsung, and so on, there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone," Miner said. Despite the runaway success of the iPhone, which sold 4 million units in its first seven months of release, "there's a single manufacturer, it's targeted at a particular demographic, and it falls far short of the 1 billion mobile phones sold every year worldwide," added Miner.
Introduced last November, Android is a "complete open-source [software] stack" for mobile devices, not just an operating system," Miner said during his eComm presentation. Trying to stimulate application development for Android devices, Google is offering $10 million in prizes in its "Android Developers Challenge" for innovative and useful apps.
Opening the iPhone platform to third-party apps, Apple earlier this month released the software development kit for the popular consumer device. Apple said this week that the SDK has already been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Miner, however, pointed out that significant restrictions will still limit the creation of rich and useful applications for the iPhone.
"There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone at least at the moment," he says.
Google said last month at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona that the Android SDK has been downloaded 750,000 times. "That's for a device that doesn't even exist yet," remarked Miner.
Motorola, Samsung, HTC, and LG all belong to the Open Handset Alliance, which was formed last year by Google to promote open platforms and open networks in the mobile and wireless industry. All four are expected to release devices based on Android in the second half of this year. Miner indicated on Thursday that he expects one of the handset makers (most likely Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, according to industry reports) to reach the market before the other three.
Android and the iPhone, Miner adds, are aimed at different markets.
"It's not a competitive thing -- it's great that people are finally building tools so all of these third-party applications can be built and get out there," Miner said. "[If I were a developer] I'd certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I'd be developing for both platforms."
[Via InformationWeek]
After his presentation on Thursday at the Emerging Communications Conference at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, Miner said he expects Android-based devices to outpace sales of the popular iPhone.
"Once you have devices out there from Motorola (NYSE: MOT), HTC, Samsung, and so on, there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone," Miner said. Despite the runaway success of the iPhone, which sold 4 million units in its first seven months of release, "there's a single manufacturer, it's targeted at a particular demographic, and it falls far short of the 1 billion mobile phones sold every year worldwide," added Miner.
Introduced last November, Android is a "complete open-source [software] stack" for mobile devices, not just an operating system," Miner said during his eComm presentation. Trying to stimulate application development for Android devices, Google is offering $10 million in prizes in its "Android Developers Challenge" for innovative and useful apps.
Opening the iPhone platform to third-party apps, Apple earlier this month released the software development kit for the popular consumer device. Apple said this week that the SDK has already been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Miner, however, pointed out that significant restrictions will still limit the creation of rich and useful applications for the iPhone.
"There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone at least at the moment," he says.
Google said last month at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona that the Android SDK has been downloaded 750,000 times. "That's for a device that doesn't even exist yet," remarked Miner.
Motorola, Samsung, HTC, and LG all belong to the Open Handset Alliance, which was formed last year by Google to promote open platforms and open networks in the mobile and wireless industry. All four are expected to release devices based on Android in the second half of this year. Miner indicated on Thursday that he expects one of the handset makers (most likely Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, according to industry reports) to reach the market before the other three.
Android and the iPhone, Miner adds, are aimed at different markets.
"It's not a competitive thing -- it's great that people are finally building tools so all of these third-party applications can be built and get out there," Miner said. "[If I were a developer] I'd certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I'd be developing for both platforms."
[Via InformationWeek]
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