Tag: android

Google Prompts Developers to Update Their Apps for Ice Cream Sandwich

The next version of Android is going to be launched soon, though no exact dates are known yet. Usually, unlike Apple, Google doesn’t like to keep information in secret, so in this aspect Apple and Google are very different — Google is open for everyone, while Apple carefully chooses with whom to work. Now when the Ice Cream Sandwich launch date (whenever it is) is becoming closer, Google has published a tutorial for developers on how to port their Honeycomb apps to Ice Cream Sandwich and vice versa.

Ice Cream Sandwich will merge Gingerbread and Honeycomb, which means the apps developed only for smartphones or only for tablets must be reprogrammed to run on both. This means Google wants developers to update their apps developed for Honeycomb tablets to be compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich devices.

As Google said the software developers kit for Ice Cream Sandwich is coming soon, and it will offer a full set of tools for Android 3.2, so there is much work to do.

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September 22, 2011 | 0 Comments More

Google Getting 1,023 Patents from IBM

Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion and received 17, 000 patents, but this wasn’t enough for the company, and now the software giant is going to get 1,023 more patents this time from IBM. The amount of the money that was transferred for this deal is not known, but the overall acquisition is made public by US Patent and Trademark Office.

Only two months ago Google bought 1,030 patents from IBM. So if we kind of connect all these acquisitions we will get that in less than 3 months Google got about 20,000 patent. Why is the software giant buying all those patents? I guess it just wants to protect its Android and the corresponding Android devices from getting into continuous patent wars. And this is reasonable, just remember the fact that we will not see the sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in some countries across the Europe because of those patent problems.

As from the patent war history of Android, we should remember that Microsoft sued Motorola Mobility claiming that “Motorola is infringing our patents and we are confident that the ITC will rule in our favor.” Another case is connected with Oracle, where the company was stating: “In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property.”

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September 16, 2011 | 0 Comments More

Android is the Second in the European Market

The fact Android is growing very fast is not a secret, but no one could imagine that Google’s operating system will show such a progress in a year. I am speaking about the results of the research made by ComScore. According to it, Android devices now account for nearly 22 percent of all smartphones in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. This number makes Android the second popular OS in Europe after Symbian, leaving iOS behind.

During a year everything has changed in these 5 countries, and if last year Symbian was nearly in half handsets in the EU, now it has only 37.8 percent of them. Moreover, last year only 6 percent of all smartphones in those five European markets ran Android, and now their number has grown more than 3.5 times!

However, things can change soon, because the iPhone 5 is going to be launched in October. It’ll shake the whole smartphone market for sure…

September 15, 2011 | 0 Comments More

Jelly Bean to Come After Ice Cream Sandwich

We are all waiting for Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich update that is going to be launched in October. Of course, it can be delayed, but as Google’s Schmidt has noted, October-November is the window they’re aiming for. Ice Cream Sandwich is the latest version of Android and there are several key points we can focus on. The most important of them is the merging of Android 2.+ and Android 3.+ versions. As you know, the first was developed especially for smartphones while the second one runs on tablets only.

Now do you want to know how the next version of Android — the one coming after Ice Cream Sandwich — will be called? We already know it!

According to This Is My Next, a trusted source claims it will be called Jelly Bean. That sounds nice, and we are sure it will be even cuter than Ice Cream Sandwich. Of course, we can’t say how it will look and what new features it will bring, but one thing is clear — the “game-changing stuff” is pushed out to Jelly Bean.

October-November are expected to be very hot, because the iPhone 5 is going to be released this time, plus, the iPad 3 will become available in January or February, so Google must hurry to launch the new version of Android in time not to appear behind Apple.

What do you think, will there be an equal competition between iOS and Android?

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September 14, 2011 | 1 Comment More

Google Offers and Google Shopper Apps Adds 5 New Cities

Google Offers was introduced back in May together with a similar application called Google Wallet. Back then the application included only Portland, The Bay Area and New York City, but now five more cities are going to be added. The list includes Austin, Boston, D.C., Denver and Seattle.

If you’re interested only in specific stores, you can go to google.com/offers, get your location and receive emails about that specific store deals.

A for those customers who are interested in getting similar information on their devices, they are able to use Google Shopper Application for Android. This application allows to get updated data on a daily basis, you just need to scroll to Today’s offer tab. The best part of the application is that you can even get info using the barcodes of the products. The search options include both voice and text search.

And the final good news is that even if you’re not close to any of this locations, Eric Rosenblum, Product Management Director of Google Offers, promises to expand the application to other locations.

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September 12, 2011 | 0 Comments More
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