Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
Google [GOOG] has filed a patent for a new unlock screen. Apple has recently been chasing after companies who use a “Slide to Unlock” feature on smartphones and was successful in a case just recently.
This new unlock method by Google looks to aim to avoid any disputes but also add a few more functions to the unlock to make it in to a mechanism to access certain parts of the system.
We’ve already had confirmation that the new Asus Transformer Prime will be getting the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update. This is of course happening on the 12th January (this week!). For those with the older generation device, the Asus Transformer, you’ll also be getting the update this week.
A rumour started today indicates that Google [GOOG] is working on creating a 7 inch tablet… perhaps a Nexus Tablet to be more precise. Although this is a rumour, it probably isn’t far from the truth. The problem with Android tablets is that none of them have really taken off. We haven’t included the Kindle Fire when making that statement, but it is an Android tablet but completely customised to feel different. This of course could mean that Amazon is winning the Android race. Either way, Google is lagging behind and needs to do something about it.
Android Developers has released the December statistics which reveal what fragmentation is like across various Android versions. The numbers are released so that developers can know where to prioritize when developing apps for Android.
Hackers have managed to extract the Silk browser from the Amazon Kindle Fire and port it over to various rooted Android devices. The Silk browser is Amazons attempt to speed up web browsing. It works by calculating some elements of a webpage server side which speeds up processing time. It also attempts to predict what links you will click on so that your next page will be already calculated and ready to download when you want to go to it.
The Android Market is continuing to grow. Numbers estimated today indicate that there are now 400,000 active apps available in the Android Market which are created by around 100,000 developers.
Google has made the Holo theme mandatory on all Ice Cream Sandwich devices. To have access to the Android Market, and other Google services, all devices running Android 4.0 must have the Holo theme available.
Over the last week of 2011 (December 25 to December 31), there were more downloads made than ever before by iOS and Android users. The stats company Flurry has reported that 1.2 billion apps were downloaded through that week.
A new Android app has been launched that aims to hide tethering from carriers. The reason some users might want to do this is so that they can pay for the data allowance on their mobile plan and then use that allowance to either browse on a mobile device or browse on a laptop tethered to the device. Recently, carriers have decided to charge for tethering which means an additional cost to the user, even if they stay within their plan.
Last week, an app for Android was released called Siri for Android. The app was fake although in order to try convince people to download it, the developer decided to call himself “Official App” and also use the official Siri icon as the Android version icon. When loading up the app is simply took users to Google Voice Actions.
Dropbox 2.0 for Android is now ready for download. The new app has been completely redesigned and now has more new features than before. Some of these features include the ability to star items to keep them stored locally on a device and on to Ice Cream Sandwich support.
Andy Rubin has commented that the Google Android operating system is seeing 700,000 devices activated each day. A lot of those will be smartphones although Android is also installed on tablets as well.
