Android And Stuff

Android KitKat: Android 4.4

2013-09-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

The next version of android has been named after a popular chocolate treat. It will be called Android KitKat.

See more about this and all the past versions of Android in the link below:

http://www.android.com/kitkat/

Nexus 4 price reduced by $100

2013-08-28T11:18:00.002-07:00

The powerful and affordable smartphone from Google — now at an even lower price. Was $299, get it now for just $199! (8 GB)

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_8gb

iOS 6 Update now available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

2012-09-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

iOS 6 i snow available for download for all iPhones starting from iPhone 3gs and the iPad 2 and The new iPad. 4th and 5th generation iPod touch devices will also be compatible.

This update has come close on the heals of the iPhone 5 announcement giving the owners of old devices something to cheer about.

Some of the major features in this release:

iOS 6 Maps application with turn by turn voice navigation and 3D views.
Siri updated to support The new iPad and also adds more language support.
Facetime now possible over cellular data.
Upgraded Mail application.
Improved camera app with Panorama.

Official whats new in iOS 6 Link :http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/

Leave your comments on what features you like in this update.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean Update

2012-09-19T15:13:00.001-07:00

Galaxy S3 with ICS is already a very polished device. The Jelly Bean update with its numerous performance and stability improvements is going to make the S3 an even more desirable one.

There is already a leaked jelly bean ROM here that looks very promising.

The OTA update must hit the devices anytime within the next couple of weeks .i.e if rumours are to be beleived and also now that the ROM has been leaked.

How private is your private Google data? Google transparency report

2011-11-03T00:21:00.000-07:00

How private is your Google data ? The data in question includes your personal photos, documents, contacts and emails used by or stored in a multitude of Google applications like Picasa, orkut, Docs, blogger, Gmail etc?

In the general the data is in relatively safe hands.

But in the true sense the data is not 100 percent private.

Governments and other government agencies and officials belonging to law enforcement agencies can request for private Google user account data and content stored in Google accounts and some times request the data be blocked or removed permanently.

Fortunately, Google has a report giving the number of such requests that they get from the government and even classifies these based on the type of requests and the application it belongs to.

This is called the Google Transparency report

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/

Google classifies the requests that it gets from the government into two different categories :

User Data requests
Content Removal requests

User Data requests is basically requests that require google to give out user data and account information. This can be anything ranging from basic account information to personal files.

Direct link to the page above : Link

The Indian government and its various agencies has requested for User Data in Google accounts and services 1739 times which includes 2439 user account

Its scary to think that the government has this type of access to view your most private data that for example may be your personal photos stored in Picasa in a private album.

Content Removal requests are those sites or URLs that need to be blocked or removed from the google search results or from applications/services like Orkut, Blogger etc.

Direct link to the page above : Link

Indian government had requested 68 times for more than 358 items to be removed from either search results or block/remove google services content like orkut, youtube etc.

It is true that this facility can be very useful for blocking malicious material from the internet like stolen personal photos or documents or shutting down blogs or sites that propagate anti-social thoughts and content. We should also understand that inherent potential of this facility to be misused.

We should really applaud Google's transparency report initiative which makes this sensitive data public and thus to an extent prevent misuse.

What do you think of this? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Gmail's new look - Switch now

2011-11-02T02:37:00.000-07:00

Google today rolled out a new look and feel for Gmail. This is in line with UI re-hauls being done for most of its applications. Google describes this look as elastic meaning that the interface can adapt to various screen sizes ranging from smart phones to smart Televisions.

It will be made available to everyone by an email from the gmail team. If you don't want to wait till then, you can click on the floating "Switch to the new look" link shown on the bottom left of the page.

Once you click this link you will be shown a page which gives some info about the new look and you can opt to continue to the new look or keep your old look as it is. Click on switch to new look to use the new look and feel.

The new interface looks very simple and in line with other applications like google docs, blogger etc which were transitioned to the new look earlier.

The new look in the default Cozy display density setting.

You can always use the setting button (gear) and choose compact or cozy if you feel the spacing too much that it wastes your screen real estate.

You can go back to the old look anytime by choosing the "Revert to old look temporarily" option from the settings button.

Another great feature is the HD themes available for the new look. Below is Gmail with Turf theme.

How do you like the new interface ? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Must have Android apps for Indian users - NDTV - Category - News

2011-10-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

Number four on the series on Must have Android apps for the Indian user is the NDTV app. The app brings all of NDTV's content in a very compact and simple to use touch interface.

The news is grouped into several categories like Top stories, Recent, India, World etc. These categories can be navigated by horizontally swiping the category list.

Touching the menu icon in the top right brings other content like Photos, Videos, Market, Cricket, Live TV, Live Radio, Weather etc.

Tapping one of these takes us to the screen corresponding to it.

Below is an example showing the Photo gallery section. When clicked on it every gallery starts a full scrren slide show with a little write up about the photo.

Read full article»

Must have Android apps for Indian users - iMobile - Category - Net Banking

2011-10-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

Number three on the series on Must have Android apps for the Indian user is iMobile.

This is a mobile banking application that lets you do pretty much do all kinds of transactions that can be done from the online net-banking facility from icici bank.

Services supported are:

Balance enquiry
Review last 5 transactions
Fund Transfer
and other service requests.

Market Download Link :Here

QR Code :

Please leave your comments about this app and any other app you deem fit to be in this list

Nokia Lumia 800 - Amazing Every day TV commercial

2011-10-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

The amazing everyday TV commercial for the yet to be launched Nokia Windows smartphone Nokia Lumia 800.

Google Music 4.0.1 app apk from Ice cream Sandwich available for download

2011-10-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

Yet another Ice cream sandwich app that has been leaked. This time it is the Google Music app.

Android police has a nice write up highlighting the difference between the current 3.0 Music and the leaked apk which is version 4.0

The page link is Here

QR Code :

Leaked Ice Cream Sandwich Android Market app available for download

2011-10-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

Another leak from the Nexus Prime and we have the android market apk from Ice cream sandwich in our phones.

The good folks at XDA have packaged it in a flash-able version. The zip files needs to be downloaded to the phone and can be flashed.

Other options like the manual root explorer method to replace the original vending.apk with this version of apk is also available.

Original xda page: Here

QR Code:

Direct Download : Here

QR Code:

Ice Cream Sandwich Launcher App available for download

2011-10-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

Android market now has an app that faithfully copies the App launcher for the yet to be released Android 4.0 Ice cream Sandwich.Though it is just a copy of the functionality of the ICS app launcher, it does a very good job in simulating it.

It is a home replacement program and can be set as the default action for the Android home button.
It is smooth enough when scrolled and supports scroll-able widgets. It also supports re-sizable widgets and home screen folders among many other features.

It is available for download from Android market: Here

QR code :

HTML5 Nokia Maps apps available for iOS and Android

2011-10-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Nokia's Ovi maps has always been one of my favorite map and navigation application ever since the day i was using the Nokia 6210 Navigator . I was really happy to see that Ovi maps is now available as a web based HTML5 app for the iOS and Android platforms.

It includes ability to cache/download your neighborhood area map. Once the maps are downloaded through WIFI, it would save a lot on network data costs and also improves performance of the map application.

Though it does not feature turn by turn or voice navigation, it has all the common bell and whistles like POI search, Traffic, location sharing, favorites, detailed route info and other.

Screen shots below:

Nokia Maps - Nokia Maps for Android

Nokia Maps - Offline map storage

Nokia Maps - POI search

Nokia Maps - Share location

Nokia Maps - Route display

Nokia Maps - Direction List

Nokia Maps - Available sharing options

Nokia Maps - About

iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II drop test

2011-10-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

The guys at squaretrade, a company selling extended warranties created a drop test for the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy S II

The blunder or business tactics used by Apple to not use the much stronger gorilla glass shows in the result. A badly damaged phone whose owners end up buying a new device. The Samsung with the gorilla glass fared much better with some minor chips and scratches.

Nokia N9 manufacturing process video

2011-10-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

The Nokia N9 manufacturing process. Amazing to see how a single block of poly-carbonate material is machined to the required form specifications.
All the parts are then carefully hand assembled to give that awesome looking final product.
This is one phone, making me think about getting a non android phone after a long time.

Nokia N9 - Meego powered handset - First thoughts

2011-10-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

The Meego OS packing Nokia N9 design is a sight for the sore eyes. Its brilliant poly carbonate uni body design is as good as a phone design can get. The impeccable build quality means only one thing. Its from Nokia. As a former user of the Nokia N900 which initially ran on Maemo, i was very excited to see the N9 running on Meego. I have to mention that the N900 itself had an option of installing Meego on it if you are a little enterprising. But time never was enough for me to do it.

Hardware :

The body is made from a single block of Poly carbonate material, machined to produce the required form. It is not cast from plastic as is normally is the case. Due to this manufacturing process the body looks flawless without any imperfections or any openings.

There aren't many physical buttons either. Not that you would miss them. The OS is designed from the ground up to not use too many physical buttons. To the right you have the volume rocker and the power lock button. On the left side there are no physical buttons. Bottom a grill opening for the speakers and on the top hidden well designed doors which hide the HDMI port, power/USB connectors and the SIM card slot. The micro SD card also fits to the slot. The top of the phone also has a standard 3.5mm audio connector. All very brilliantly though of.

The phone also comes with all the standard issue sensors: a proximity sensor, accelerometer, ambient light sensor for automatic brightness adjustments and a magnetometer a.k.a compass for proper map orientations in GPS based turn by turn navigation using Ovi maps.

Nokia N9 Commercial :

Display :

The phone features a slightly curved screen which aids in the swipe motion. The edges of the screen blend seamlessly in into the body of the phone.
The 3.9-inch FWVGA (854x480) AMOLED display is a gorgeous one rendering perfect black and comparable to other top notch mobile AMOLED screens. The screen contrast is so good that you cannot make out the difference where the screen ends and the black uni body poly carbonate shell begins.

Processor:

Read full article»

IRIS for Android is Siri for iPhone 4S reversed

2011-10-22T00:10:00.000-07:00

Ever imagine how Siri, the knowledgeable, refined and resourceful personal assistant for the iPhone 4s would have been when she was a child ?

Welcome to iris for Android. Yes you are right, that's Siri reversed. Its developer Dexetra claims that it was all developed as a weekend project just for the kicks of it.

iris is capable of basic word definitions and more basic natural language processing. But one cannot but wonder how a functional version of siri can be put together in a span of just 8 Hrs over a weekend.

I ran it through it paces and the screen shot above gives some of the responses. As can be seen its quiet intelligent enough to grab who is A R Rehman and foolish enough not to understand what is 1+1. It can even pull up images of the topic.

iris is in the early alpha stage in the Android market. It remains to be seen how the developer takes it from here, to a fully matured product or a run of the mill app.

Download iris here

SDK Download - Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

2011-10-21T00:52:00.000-07:00

Google has posted the Software development Kit for Android 4.0. This means the developers can start developing applications using the new features provided by Android 4.0.

This will ensure availability of a fair number of apps available for the OS when Samsung Nexus is released for the general public.

Download Page : Here

Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich, Samsung Galaxy Nexus launched

2011-10-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

Google and Samsung today took the next big step and launched Samsung Nexus S with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in a press conference in Honk Kong.

Lets first see the OS itself(Android4.0) and then go to the first phone ever to officially have Android 4.0

Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich:

Ice Cream Sandwich is the latest and greatest in the Android line of operating systems.From the looks of it, this is by far the most refined and sleek looking Android operating system ever.

The UI has gone through some major refinements. As Android.com puts it, it is the logical next step in the refinement and evolution of an already wonderful UI.

It introduces some innovative features like Android Beam for NFC (near field communications) based sharing where two NFC equipped devices can be touched together and simply tapped to initiate any transfer or other transactions like payments.WiFi-Direct enables users to share content using direct WiFi connections established between two devices.

Another cool feature is device unlock by face recognition.

The OS has much refined animations and system wide feedback providing for a much better user interaction

Support for home screen folders to group related apps has been made available natively. Previously this was achievable only through third party apps.

Widgets can now be re sized and designed to be much more interactive .

New Sense 3.X type of lock screen allowing for actions from lock screen like answering and rejecting calls and checking messages.

A powerful voice recognition engine allows for continuous text dictations

Tight integration between contacts and other social features and profiles.

A totally revamped camera application using live effects with integrated gallery and photo editing.

And now to the Phone :

Samsung Galaxy Nexus :

Galaxy Nexus takes the credit of being the first phone to officially sport Android 4.0

It sports a slim and curved design. Some of it highlights include among others:

A 1.3 Ghz Dual core processor
A gorgeous 1280 x 720 HD display
NFC based transactions for proximity based communications
Face Unlock
A zero lag 5 mega pixel camera capable of 1080p video with continuous auto focus and single motion panoramic shot
4G capable
Voice dictation

Must have Android apps for Indian users - BookMyShow- Category - Entertainment

2011-10-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

Number two on the series on Must have Android apps for the Indian user is BookMyShow. Movie junkies need not look any further for their ticket booking needs. BookMyShow provides a convenient way to search and book movie tickets. Currently the application supports movie, art and theatre and sporting tickets.

The developers have promised to include other miscellaneous events in the near future. Once the application is launched we are greeted with a rather elegant and simple screen. This gives an option to choose from the below categories.

Once a category is selected (in this example movies), the select region screen is displayed. You can use the

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Must have Android apps for Indian users - TOI - Category - News

2011-10-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

Number one on the series of must have android applications for the Indian consumers is the TOI - TIMES OF INDIA app. This is one of my favorite news applications presenting the information in a simple and uncluttered format. The categories are organized sideways and all the news headlines related to the category are organized in a page. One can move to the next category using the category label at the top or a side swipe gesture towards left or right. One cannot but avoid noticing the advertisement in the bottom of the screen. This from my experience is mostly unobtrusive.

Main screen showing various categories and news articles

Detailed news is brought about by clicking on the headline which opens up the news in detail.

Clicking inside the news expands the news to full screen mode which is convenient.

A rather interesting category that stood out from other normal categories one would expect from a news application is the Movie Reviews. I was pleasantly surprised to see all the ratings and reviews collected and presented in a single page.

I will be covering other apps in this last in my future posts. Please leave a comment if you have any app in mind.

Market Download Link : here

Google Translate with Conversation Mode for Android - Realtime spoken translations now in 14 languages

2011-10-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

Google has updated Google translate to support 14 languages in its rather interesting feature called conversation mode.

Conversation mode translates spoken words in real time and speaks out the translated voice in the other language.

The initial release was done earlier this year with only English and Spanish support.

See the action in the video below.

Jeff Chin the product manager at Google responsible for Translate writes that the product is still in Alpha and is susceptible to background noise and regional accents.

As Google translate is a self learning program, he predicts that as more people use it, the system learns the various accents and will provide better results.

Google translate can be downloaded from Google market here.

Dennis Ritchie, the co-creator of C programming language and Unix is dead

2011-10-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

Dennis Ritchie who co-created C and UNIX and all the software systems we know now is dead at the age of 70 after battling an unknown illness for long.

The news was reported by Rob Pike a Google engineer and Former colleague of Dennis Ritchie via Google+.

Pike writes : He was a quiet and mostly private man, but he was also my friend, colleague, and collaborator, and the world has lost a truly great mind

Dennis Ritchie's profile page in Bell labs: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/

For more on Dennis Ritchie :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

Microsoft launches Windows 7.5 Mango phones in India

2011-10-14T00:14:00.000-07:00

Microsoft launches Windows 7.5 based mobile phones in India. The OS is code named Mango. For those who think what a odd choice of name this is, consider "Ice cream sandwich" which is the code name for the next version of android 4.x devices.

The OS employs the "Metro" UI which presents information in live tiles displayed in the home screen. These tiles are live in the sense they can pull real time data as well as run processes in the background.

Currently Microsoft store has HTC Radar on sale for Rs 23,990

http://www.microsoftstore.co.in/microsoft/1214/product/HTC-Radar.aspx

The OS includes various features like :

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Google announces Q3 earnings $9.27 billion revenue, $2.7 billion in income

2011-10-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Google today announced its 3rd Quarter earning of $9.27 billion in total revenue and $2.7 billion in net income. This represents a 33% jump when compared to the same quarter last year.

Google CEO Larry Page also announced that there were 190 million active android phones and 200 million Google Chrome web browser installations

Google+ has more than 40 million users now.