The long-awaited Nokia Lumia 900 launches this weekend on AT&T in the USA, but we are still awaiting a release date for European markets. When it comes, our own Windows Phone fanboy Henry Hunt will get one straight away, and, with the help of my 710 and forthcoming 800 reviews, we can help you find if a Nokia Windows Phone is right for you.
Google wants to make the web more mobile, and is willing to splash the cash to do so.
Google(s goog) wants to bring more small websites to mobile phones, and to help nudge those sites along it’s willing to foot the bill for a year. Google, with the help of mobile Web optimization startup Duda Mobile, is offering for 12 months free hosting and customization of Web sites for mobile browsers in an effort to make more Internet content mobile-friendly.
Fortune first broke the story Thursday morning, reporting that the initiative as a new service, but according to The Next Web, the offer is really an extension of the Go Mo program Google launched in November. TNW cited a post on Duda Mobile’s blog that has since been removed from its Website:
“Our hope is that by offering both the education AND the service at no cost for one year, we can help businesses make the shift to mobile more quickly, benefiting both their business as well…
View original post 347 more words
This week’s Windows Phone app of the week is Gerbil Physics by Pencel Games. This great game is one of my favourite games on the Windows Phone platform. It may sound weird, but you play as an apprentice to a gerbil wizard who has to save the other gerbils from the toad king and his army of flying penguins. The toad king has imprisoned the other gerbils inside indestructible blocks and he has made them into monuments to himself. You have to destroy them in order to save your fellow fur balls.
As you can see from the picture above, you do this through a mixture of bombs, explosives and other demolition equipment to get all the gerbils below the magical yellow line. This simple game, with an excellent back-story, comes with 200G of fairly challenging achievements, which is a nice change from games such as Collapse which it took me about 10 mins to get all the achievements.
Gerbil Physics, Windows Phone, £2.29
Download from the Marketplace or visit the website
Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app cum social network, finally launched on Android today. The app, which lets users apply filters to their pictures and share them across a variety of social networks, including within its own community, has proved wildly popular since its launch on iOS, with over 30 million registered users (from myself to Justin Bieber) and Apple naming it as the best iPhone app of 2011. If you have a phone running Android 2.2 or later and you want to see what all the fuss is about, head over to Google Play for the free download (unless you have the new HTC One X), but don’t blame me if you become addicted. I hear it can have that effect on people.
Instagram, Android & iOS, Free
Download from the App Store or Google Play or visit the website
Research from Flurry suggests that Amazon’s Appstore, currently US-only, generates more revenue per daily user than Google’s own Play Store, formerly known as the Android Market.
Some people don’t like putting cases on their phones, but what if they were football shaped? Well, TheO Ball is! It is a football with one exception: you can put your phone in it! So instead of a case that just fits the phone, you can now buy a case that you can actually use to play games. It fits nearly all smartphones including iPhone, Android and Windows Phone devices. In short, if you have a smartphone, you will be able to use TheO.
It is designed and manufactured by Physical Apps, a company with the aim of making mobile gaming more physical and beneficial to health. TheO Ball has a slot that means your phone is safe and secure, whilst you can still see the screen. The ball itself is made completely of foam and so provides protection for both your smartphone and its surroundings.
TheO Ball recently won the Popular Science Best Toy of Toy Fair 2012 award and I’m confident that it deserved its title. TheO Ball has some dedicated apps including games like Hot Potato, which is a game where you throw the ball to each other as quickly as possible. You lose if you wait too long before passing it on. I expect there will be many more fun and exciting games to play in the very near future, with the ball launching later this year for around $24.95 (£15.67), with each app costing from $1.99 to $4.99. Sign up for more information at TheO Ball website.
We all know how ridiculous Android device names can be, but this chart from the Intercom Blog really alarms me. To quote the author:
If your product isn’t a condom then don’t name it like one
Don’t know what I mean? Have a look below.
NB: There is actually a phone called the LG Rumor Touch, but it is a dumbphone so it doesn’t count here. This is an advert for it:
With HTC’s Beats Audio division acquiring music streaming service MOG, TechCrunch has a look at how HTC is acquiring innovation rather than innovating themselves.
This week’s app of the week for Windows Phone is Rowi, a Twitter app by Hidden Pineapple.
Many people would just say that you don’t need a Twitter app on a Windows Phone as it is already built into the OS. I personally love the Twitter integration that was added with Windows Phone 7.5 but, for some things such as actually reading my feed, it is not that great. So, after a while of struggling to keep up to date with all of the people that I legally stalk, I decided to download an app to use instead.
I started off with the official Twitter app for Windows Phone, which was horrendously bad, before going on to Birdsong which was better but still not that great. Eventually I came across Rowi, and everything changed. This little app is great, being incredibly simple to use and designed with a perfect Metro theme. When you open the app, your feed is the first thing you see and, with one swipe of the screen, you can see both your mentions and direct messages. You can even set it so that your notifications such as mentions and messages appear on a live tile. I think that the single most annoying thing about the Twitter website is that you have to manually update tweets, but Rowi auto-updates and, although new posts will appear while you are reading, the app leaves you where you are and just stacks the tweet on top of all the previously read ones. Now when you are reading what @JustinBieber was doing a week ago and a new tweet comes through, you don’t have to scroll all the way back down to where you were before.
Rowi, Windows Phone 7, £2.29
Download from the Marketplace or visit the website
Follow me on Twitter @huntho21 for random babble and cool stuff!
With Samsung’s announcement that Galaxy S II owners will not in fact be getting their Ice Cream Sandwich updates today as previously stated by one of their websites, the age-old discussion regarding Android updates, skinning and fragmentation has returned to the fore. Android 4.0, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich and referred to as ICS, was confirmed on way back on October 15th of last year, the same day that this very website launched, yet now, almost 5 months later, only a small handful of devices from major manufacturers have either launched with or been updated to Google’s latest and greatest operating system. Why is this the case, and what can be done to help the situation?
Take a look at this graphic, taken from the Android website, which shows the versions of Android which have accessed the Android Market Google Play in the two weeks leading up to March 5th.
Just 1.6% of Android devices are running the latest version of the software. A comprehensive list of devices that have either shipped with or been officially updated to Ice Cream Sandwich is below. Please note that this does not include devices that have been announced but not shipped.
Firstly, some of the blame has to be placed on Google. The OEMs do not get access to the source code until it is publicly released, with the exemption of the partner making the flagship Nexus device, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, announced alongside Ice Cream Sandwich at a press conference in Hong Kong last year. While Google should want the Nexus phones to succeed and have an advantage over other handsets on the market at the time of release, I believe that major manufacturers such as HTC, Sony, Samsung and Google’s own subsidiary Motorola should get early access to the source code, so that handsets and devices can get the latest software promptly after it is unleashed upon the world. It is wrong to go into a store at this stage and see just one device, the Galaxy Nexus, sporting up-to-date software.
We must never forget the manufacturers themselves, as they too delay updates for a number of reasons. Firstly, they already have your money and, as such, there is little benefit to them if they spend time and money preparing software updates for phones. This raises a whole load of questions regarding the state of customer service in the 21st century, but those are for another day. An example of this kind of neglect is Samsung, with the Galaxy S. Late last year, the Korean company confirmed that they would not update the phone, the second biggest selling Android device of all time, to Ice Cream Sandwich. Their excuse? TouchWiz and Ice Cream Sandwich can’t live together on the ROM. Why not just get rid of the crappy skin which users hate?
Of course, manufacturers feel that they have to stick their bloated skins on top of Android, and updates get delayed to ensure that this is the case. Take LG for example. At Mobile World Congress 2 weeks ago, they unveiled a host of new Android devices – the Optimus L3, Optimus L5, Optimus L7, Optimus 3D Max, Optimus 4X HD and the Optimus Vu phablet. Of these, half are scheduled to launch with Gingerbread, and only the L7, L5 and 4X HD are guaranteed to have Ice Cream Sandwich. As for the rest, LG issued a vague timeframe for updates of later this year. Considering that they have no plans to update their existing phones until Q2 or even Q3 at the earliest, I wouldn’t hold out much hope of this ever happening. If such an update actually does come, the community will probably have Jelly Bean stable on the handsets. LG’s excuse? A combination of the skin and the fact that they seemingly don’t care about consumers – a statement that can be applied to almost all Android manufacturers. This infographic, made last year by Michael DeGusta of The Understatement, shows just how slow these updates can be, especially compared to iOS.
Across the internet, I have seen people complaining about the update situation, only to be told to buy a Nexus phone and have all their problems solved, but this argument is ridiculously stupid. The beauty of Android is the wide variety of handsets, tailored to suit every need. To be told that, in order to be certain to get the latest software officially, you have to buy a certain device, takes away this beauty. If I wanted that kind of situation, where I no choice in form factor in exchange for a guarantee to get updates, I’d buy an iPhone. Take the Galaxy Nexus, for instance. At 4.65″, it is way too big for me. I think the design is horrible in comparison to some other smartphones, the rear camera is, for such a high-end device, sub-par for the course, and Samsung’s incessant use of flimsy plastics mean that I would never even consider buying one. If I want to get an Android phone with almost a guarantee of an update however, I have no other choice. This is not on.
Even if I were to jump on the Nexus bandwagon, I still wouldn’t be 100% certain of updates. Certain Nexus S owners are still waiting for Google and carriers to push the ICS update to their devices, even though most GSM variants of the phone got the update to 4.0 back in December. We must not forget the Nexus One either. The HTC device was Google’s first flagship and, despite the fact that the Android community can do it, Google has announced that they do not plan to push an ICS update to the handset which is still less than 2 years old.
So, until the day comes where updates are prompt and ensured, I will not buy an Android phone or tablet. I know that there are other ways of getting updates, but manufacturers and carriers should have a duty to ensure that devices are kept up-to-date for at least the standard contract length of 24 months. And finally, before you dismiss this whole post as pure trolling of Android, I am an Android user and I am still waiting for Gingerbread. If HTC doesn’t care about an 18 month old phone, why should I?
Digixav 