Android

When THIS Happens We ALL Win

If you search around the internet based on the images in this post you will find loads of prognostication – Android fans calling it meaningless (despite foretelling the death of iOS with each percentage Android gains at the expense of RIM), iOS fans calling it the ‘Android plummet’ (in spite of arguing that short term shifts are meaningless), and so on. What I see – particularly when I look at the next image – is a market that is moving more rapidly than ever before. Smartphones accounted for over TWO THIRDS of all mobile phone sales in October and November…

News & Features

Android’s New Holo Theme to Help Speed Updates; Potential to End Themes?

According to Droid Life and the Android developers blog the Holo theme included in Android 4.0 is a requirement on a devices that ship the Android Marketplace with 4.0. This promises to fix is the amount of time it takes manufacturers to produce updates to the OS. They do this by making Holo a requirement and allowing a DeviceDefault skin as well. Adam Powell of Google says: Formally separating these theme families will also make future merges easier for manufacturers updating to a new platform version, helping more devices update more quickly. Also, developers can specify DeviceDefault or Holo. Since…

Reviews

ePillow Tablet Pillow review

Every now and then we are invited to review something that just looks… well… ridiculous but we end up agreeing to take a look anyway. When the “ridiculous review item” first arrives and we open the box our first impressions are, for the most part, confirmed. Yes, more often than not the product is silly, looks like a bad joke and poses a bit of a challenge with regard to actually writing the review. Every now and then however, once we actually start using the item we discover that our first AND second impressions were actually wrong! Sure, the item…

News & Features

US Cellular Launching Huawei Ascend II in January for FREE After Rebate!

Phones such as the Samsung Repp and HTC Wildfire have shown that low-end devices still have much to offer, and the Huawei Ascend II looks to step in at a somewhat higher level but still be available for free after rebate! This is the description: The Huawei Ascend IITM with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) is your entertainment center, GPS navigator, news and weather hub, and your social network connection all in one powerful, pocket-sized device. Stream content from the web or your own media library and view it on the 3.5″ HVGA touchscreen display. Grab apps from the Android Marketplace and…

Reviews

HTC EVO Design 4G for Sprint Review

As smartphones continue their march into the mainstream the challenge of choosing the right phone for you grows ever-more challenging. This challenge is compounded by the fact that so many of HTC’s phones seems to be a slight variation on the same theme over and over and over again. (The same holds true for Samsung’s phones which all offer slight changes in screen size, features etc while remaining largely the same.) As Judie wrote in her review of the HTC Rhyme a few weeks ago, I like items that have their own personality and that aren’t similar to every one else’s, but…

Editorials

Where’s my “Made for Android?”

My eldest son had a birthday recently, receiving numerous presents. This in and of itself is not unusual, but there was an aspect to one of those presents that triggered a revelation of sorts for me. Before I delve into that, let me preface it with a disclaimer: I currently own no Apple products. Zip. Nada. Zero. In the realm of cell phones, I’m partial to Android. I love the customizability of it, the screen widgets, and how I can choose to integrate it with my PCs. My son, not yet a cell phone user, owns an iPod. Consequently, towards…

Editorials, Gear Bits

Latest Android OS Distribution Numbers Showing Gingerbread Taking Over

Have you ever heard me complain about Android fragmentation as a major issue? Yeah, you probably have. But there is actually some good news on the fragmentation front – more than half of all Android phones are running the latest operating system Android 2.3.x aka ‘Gingerbread’. Add to that the 35.3% running the previous version Froyo (2.2), and you have more than 85% on a ‘fairly unified’ platform.

Gear Bits

One More Tablet Gone; Can Microsoft Avoid the Same Fate?

image courtesy of BerryReporter Clinton recently wrote an opinion piece entitled, “As RIM Writes Off The Playbook, The Pressure is on Microsoft to Make a Complete Windows 8 Tablet“, in which he says: This morning the Wall Street Journal reported that RIM is taking a $485 million charge for their lackluster tablet, the Playbook. The charge comes by way of a markdown in the value of the massive inventor that RIM still has of the devices. It is a brutal and costly reminder that if you kinda-sorta-maybe-woulda-shoulda your tablet strategy, the price can be steep. Very steep. and The challenge facing Microsoft is that they are…

Gear Bits

Droid 4 Revealed – Like a Moto Razr with a Slide-Out QWERTY Keyboard

When it comes to mobile devices I tend to be fairly platform agnostic, owning Android phones, iPod Touches (well, iPods since the original one in 2001), and both iPads and Android Tablets. But there is one place where I have clear bias (well, aside from gaming performance), and that is my preference for physical keyboards. Listing the smartphones I have used over the last few years, there is the original Droid, Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, HTC Touch Pro 2, HTC 7 Pro, and Droid Pro. What do all of those phones have in common? A physical keyboard. I even stuck…

Reviews

The Motorola Droid RAZR Android Phone Review

The battle for “World’s Thinnest” presses on with the release of Motorola’s latest flagship. Resurrecting the name of a phone that became an icon, the RAZR is back, but aside from the name, it bears little resemblance to the phone-in-skinny-jeans of 2004. The new RAZR, or the XT910 as Motorola define it, is an Android slate measuring a trim 7.1mm at its thinnest point, handily eclipsing the Galaxy S II’s now portly 8.49mm figure. Make no mistake; this is a seriously thin phone. But like a Lamborghini, it may hug the ground when laid flat, but it’s seriously wide. At…

Editorials, News & Features

Android Rules Smartphone Roost … But Holiday ‘Wish Lists’ Show Vulnerability

Guess who wants an Android Tablet for Christmas/Hanukkah? (Hint: no one). But we’ll return to that in a moment. This week we got news that put the Android OS at more than 50% market share for smartphone operating systems. This is based on numbers from Gartner, which means that they willingly and knowingly count Samsung’s % estimates’ the same as other people’s ‘shipments’ the same as other people’s actual SALES. In other words, their numbers are a crapshoot. But make no mistake – Android is BY FAR the dominant mobile OS. If you look at the trends in the graph above,…

News & Features

Samsung Hits Another Advertising Home Run with Google Nexus Commercial

I had already written about just how great the Samsung Galaxy S II commercial was a couple of months ago, but at the time Apple and Samsung were in the midst of the ‘copy me, copy you’ spectacle and so I wrapped it around a tongue-in-cheek accusation of copying. Certainly Samsung has learned that the macho specmanship approach of Motorola has a very narrow appeal, which shows very well in this new ad as well. The upcoming Nexus has gotten some very positive early looks, and should be a big success for Samsung and give a great look at the…

Reviews

Android Phone Review: The HTC Rhyme

I like items that have their own personality and that aren’t similar to every one else’s, but lately it seems like all of the HTC Android phones that I have been posting about have been basically the same phone — albeit with different features or screen sizes. Has it seemed that way to you? Whether it’s been the Vivid, or the Rezound or all the EVO iterations, there are traits that most HTC Android phones seem to share: they are rectangular, they have four capacitive buttons on the bottom of the screen, there is a noticeable speaker grill at the top of the screen, they…

Music Diary, News & Features

Music Diary Notes: Spotify Lands on Windows Phone 7!

While the first reaction to this news might be ‘so what?’, it is worth noting because the on-demand services have been slow in arriving on Windows Phone 7, and their offerings have been generally anemic when they DID appear. I am thinking specifically of Slacker, whose initial app was both unreliable and a battery drainer, and also Rdio, who supported the platform but the offering definitely paled compared to their iOS and Android apps. That was then, this is now – Slacker fully supports background playback, Live Tiles, instant resume, and more. And Rdio’s Mango update includes background play and…

Editorials

Lies, Damn Lies, and Android Tablet Numbers

Image courtesy of Retrevo I have been on the hunt for over a year for an Android tablet that meets my needs: I have abandoned hope for now that will be anything appealing in the 10″ space, since Android is currently inferior and fragmented for gaming and a non-factor in music production software. But in the 7″ space there are some cool options, yet in spite of trying three different tablets (Galaxy Tab, Acer Iconia and HTC Flyer) and finding that the size is perfect … I haven’t managed to find a device with enough positives that I can accept…

Reviews

Review: Asus EeePad Transformer

The tech press has maligned Android tablets. There just hasn’t been one that has caught the up to the iPad according to many people. That may soon change with tablets like the one I have, the Asus’s EeePad Transformer. Hardware Much of the hardware on the Android tablet front has eerily similar specs. Like most Android tablets that have a version of Honeycomb, the Transformer has an Nvidia Tegra 2, 1 GB of ram, 16 or 32 GB of Flash (mine has 16), WiFi (B,G and N supported), Bluetooth V2.1+EDR, HDMI out, MicroSD Slot, a 5 megapixel camera on the back and a…

Reviews

Android Powered Tablet Review: Vinci Tab, Early Learning System for Children

There is no denying that our kids are growing up in a constantly changing digital world. My two boys have developed the same connection with gadgets and digital devices as I have, only at a much younger age. I have been careful when turning them loose with my devices but often let them play with the iPad or iPhone, and they love it. Since they could barely walk, they have been able to use our IOS devices easily and without much instruction. While most of us remember the first time we used a TRS 80 or Apple IIe in school,…

News & Features

HTC Wildfire S Lands on US Cellular for FREE (With Contract)

It is no secret that Android devices are extremely popular, based on the utility of the operating system as well as inexpensive pricing from most carriers. Now US Cellular introduces the HTC Wildfire S Android smartphone for FREE after rebate. It is a solid phone at a great price. Let’s take a quick look! Here is what US Cellular says: Get the HTC Wildfire STM to keep you at the center of your social world. Featuring AndroidTM 2.3 (Gingerbread) and HTC SenseTM, the HTC Wildfire S brings together all the different ways to communicate with your friends and family (calls,…

Editorials

Farewell, Android

As regular readers of Gear Diary may know, I used an original Droid for almost two years. In fact, up until a few months ago, I was totally convinced my next phone would be an Android device. But Android and I had a falling out, and I picked up an iPhone 4s on Friday. Why? And is the learning curve tough? Read on for my thoughts! First, there’s the “why”. A few things dragged me away from my little robot friends. One, Android is becoming increasingly fractured. It seems as though the only way to guarantee timely updates and continued…

News & Features

Sprint Will Have the New HTC EVO Design 4G on October 23, and So Can You!

If you have been wondering when the next member of the EVO family would make itself known, the wait is over, as the fifth member of the HTC EVO family — the EVO Design 4G — is about to be available from Sprint. The HTC EVO Design 4G builds on the wildly popular EVO line, but brings you more in a sleek new package. The first EVO family member touting World Phone capabilities, the HTC EVO Design 4G builds on many of the “must-have” features of its predecessors, including a 1.2Ghz processor and large 4” qHD touchscreen display, while sporting a…

Editorials

Let the iPhone 6 Rumors Begin… WE Already Have the “Proof”

I was reading through my feeds today and a story on Droid Life cropped up about some pictures appearing on Picasa that were tagged as being taken by a Droid RAZR and the Galaxy Nexus. Both phones are all but confirmed, with tons of evidence throughout the web, but these pics are being labeled as evidence as the phone being out real soon now. They may actually be out, but posting pictures that purportedly came from the devices is hardly evidence. Why do I say that? I will show you. The above picture was taken with my Droid 2. Yeah…

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