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Free Droid phone from Google at ADL2010

Max — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:29:01 +0000

I am attending Android Developers Lab (ADL2010) at Cambridge Massachusetts right now and today all attendees received a free Droid phone with one month service from Verizon. Unfortunately it is not unlocked as the IONs @googleio-2009, but hey - it’s a free Android phone

Google advertises Nexus one on its homepage and all over its AdSense network

Max — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:15:00 +0000

Google is really pushing the Nexus One hard. Check out how the homepage is looking. Yes – they advertise it right on the homepage!

Google Nexus one phone promotion on Google homepage

I have been spotting a LOT (and I mean really a L-O-T) AdSense advertisements for Nexus one on the web in random places. What does it mean – google pushing Nexus One so hard? Is it one of the deal sides with HTC that Google will push the device really hard to promote the sales and therefore revenue for HTC? Or is it more strategic decision and Google is trying to set standard for Android phone just as iPhone had set standard for smartphones already? While it is probably a combination of many factors – it would be extremely interesting to know what are the major driving factors behind this huge promotion machinery.

Who will rule the mobile market in 5 years?

Max — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:35:55 +0000

From one of the discussions titled very similar, came this (in our opinion) very insightful comment by Alex Pakka

BlackBerry will have a major chunk of the corporate market for a while. The simple fact is, no one can come close to the infrastructure and this level of relationship with each individual carrier that fast. No matter how much money one has. BlackBerry is more than just a device, it is middle tier + device + push/security/IT policies etc. It might not hold up to the latest and greatest consumer devices in flashiness, but as a corporate workhorse it will stay for the foreseeable future. No other smart phone can deliver intranet access from around the globe as effectively and securely. I would bet on RIM still holding 40% of the corporate smart phone market in North America in 5 years. Most probably RIM will also have strategic partnerships in the infrastructure/middle tier areas with IBM, Oracle and SAP.

iPhone will come up with new ultra cool devices for mac-oriented people (of which we will see more). I would not dismiss Apple’s innovative edge just yet and consumers will like it a lot. At least 30% of consumer smart phone market will be firmly in Apple’s hands.

Android will target the middle ground between biz and consumers, maybe prosumers are the target. I don’t see any possibility for Androids to escape fragmenting into loosely coupled eco-systems, around large manufacturers. The capabilities and proprietary OS extensions will be so different, that many software vendors will give up on a single piece running everywhere (which will be feasible with RIM and Apple). But Android should be the most flexible one for fancy things involving clouds, LBS and social networks.

Nokia will go with maemo, but I guess it will split the market with Android by delivering more robust, but heavier devices. And Android will do with flashy lighter ones (offloading things to the cloud too). Symbian will propbably stay, but not in the smart phone market. At least not in the the high-end. All others seem to be marginalized.

Software will shift to widgets and HTML 5.0 for sure. But the process is going to be fairly slow – in 5 years it will be an achievement of the industry if half of the mobile software is widget-style.

We agree with this almost entirely and think this is a great summary of what might happen in the future. 5 years is a long time in technology and is even more so in the rapid moving mobile technology, so many surprises are possible in the future and no one, we believe can predict now what will happen close enough.

Sneak preview of Sony-Ericson Android phone codenamed Rachel

Max — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:39:46 +0000

I just wrote about how I am impressed by the Palm Pre (and yeah I am mainly impressed by Palm Pre’s UI) and I am concentrating lately on UI design, so I am simply living the UI design lately and I was so much more impressed by palm than iPhone. But I still have a very warm place in heart for Android and the question is – where comes Android. And apparently there are some good news for Android. Some VERY good news for Android. Sony Ericson’s Rachel UI is looking great as well. Here’s a video of a sneak preview:

I am still under the magic of Pre’s cards though – it’s just so slick and cool, you can’t ignore it

Bright Future for Android powered HTC device – HTC Magic more than 1 million units to be sold

Max — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:42:10 +0000

Taiwan-based HTC Corp expects worldwide sales of the HTC Magic handset, its second Android phone, to hit 1 million units within one or two months, said CEO Peter Chou, the Taipei Times reported on Friday.

HTC and Chunghwa Telecom Co yesterday launched the HTC Magic in Taiwan. HTC and Vodafone Group Plc unveiled Android-powered handsets in Europe in February. HTC has partnerships with AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile that will enable strong sales in the U.S.

Android market share to grow 900% in 2009

Max — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:58:30 +0000

Android market share is prognosed to grow somewhat mighty 900% in 2009 compared to its debuted year — 2008. The platform is definitely still receiving a lot of interest and attention both among the consumers and developers, but with only one headset on the market it tool about 6 month to reach 1 million units sold landmark.

Analytic companies project 900% growth and this is partly conditioned on many more devices to become available in the second part of 2009. T-Mobile has recently leaked some plans on releasing at least 3 devices. The G1 will be pretty much ending its market life span somewhere around back to school time in the end of August and will be replaced by the G2, which already is confusing everyone around with all the nicknames (Sapphire, myTouch etc…). The G2 is rumored to be priced at $179 with the plan.

Even more interest however is drawn to Samsung with its rumored Houdini and HTC Hero – another Android headset, scheduled to come out of HTC labs somewhere by third quarter of 2009.

All in all — there should be many interesting headsets coming out this year that might greatly contribute to popularity of Android headset which eventually will materialize in units sold numbers.

iPhone will definitely steal some heat from Android with 3.0 OS this year and debut of the new Palm Pre phone, which already announced early access to its SDK. And RIM will probably unveil a new phone close to BlackBerry developers conference in early November.

Yet another Android powered tablet PC

Max — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:58:24 +0000

We have posted about a tablet PC running Android previously and there were also couple other prototypes we didn’t cover, but now it seems that there is finally a tablet PC running Android that will be mass produced.

Seem like almost from nowhere, the world’s first Google Android netbook has appeared from a Chinese manufacturer, Guangzhou Skytone Transmission Technologies, more renown for producing low cost netbooks targeted to kids.

On Skytone’s website, you can clearly see the notebook — Alpha 680 which is meant to be a refresh of the Linux-based Alpha 600. The Alpha 680 has a 7-inch screen with 800 x 480 resolution and is powered by an ARM 11 533MHz processor which is pretty much what you’d get on the G1. Given its price of $100, the rest of the specifications are very weak. The Alpha 680 notebook comes with only 128MB RAM and 1GB of flash storage in the standard edition.

It does look kinda cheap and is definitely not what most have expected out of the first Android powered notebook, but hey, who had expected that the first Android notebook will be produced by a little known Chinese company?

You can see the demo video of the notebook running the Android below:

Android based Dream to be sold in France

Max — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:50:48 +0000

It seams that HTC dream will soon become available in France through Orange. It may beat to the punch the reported release of Dream running Androidn in Spain that we reported earlier. There are rumorred to be 4 different plans starting quite low and ending quite high. Interestingly enough, Orange is not a member of the OHA (Open Handset Alliance) unlike Vodafone which seemed to be the main distributor of HTC Dream in Europe up to that point of Orange announcing their support of Dream starting in France and then who knows.

Modified HTC Dream will be soon available in Spain

Max — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:23:27 +0000

It looks like Spain will soon be getting an Android-based handset to call their own. The handset will be released by Telefonica carrier and will carry the HTC Dream name (G1 is actually HTC Dream). Aside from having the “original HTC name” and not Google rebrended name G*, is also appears to have received a slight makeover. It is nothing radical, but still has a little nicer overall appearance.

Telefonica have yet to announce just when the Dream will be available, but have stated that it will cost between €0 and €199 depending on your current contract. No word yet if this updated Dream will become available in other areas. But rumors have it will be available soon in Japan and also probably in neighboring Thailand. Will it also get a makeover? We’ll see about that.

via androinica

Interesting take on Google vs. Apple battle over multitouch

Max — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:20:15 +0000

Quite an interesting take has Steven Musil from Cnet news, where he have posted an article today having an interesting and seems quite personal take on Android vs. Apple battle over multitouch. Oh yeah, there is also the Palm Pre in the picture. The mixtures of those phones makes it interesting to see what king of approach they chose considering Apple has gazzillion patents for iPhone and one specific governing heuristics in multitouch.

Did we mention that Microsoft uses multitouch technology in its different “surface” devices… It’s very interesting indeed how this will unveil, and believe me, we will be active witnesses to this as well.