A few days after the launch of the Google Nexus One mobile phone, the Android team has released version 2.1 of the Android SDK which is named “Flan”. The updated SDK is currently found only one the Google N1 superphone. But it should soon find its way into the other Android phones on the market via online updates. This includes Motorola’s popular Milestone Android mobile phone currently available in the US as the Motorola Droid under Verizon.
The popular notetaking mobile app, Evernote, gets an update for the Android. Evernote is a mobile app, that provides a free service that lets you create audio notes, text notes, image snapshots and even upload files. The service also offers a premium / paid version which allows you to upload any type of file.
Today the speculation stops. Google has finally unveiled its own Android based mobile phone called Nexus One. The mobile phone looks pretty sleek and the specs are awesome. Display is OLED at 800×480, 1Ghz CPU, HSPA, bluetooth+EDR … These specs are fast becoming the standard these days.
With the Nexus One launch, Google is bringing Google Earth on the mobile phone — this just shows how much 3D power the 1Ghz Snapdragon has. The Android 2.1 Eclair update available on the Nexus One will also bring Google’s turn-by-turn Navigation plus other voice features like being able to say your tweets. One sorely missed feature though is multi-touch capabilities like pinch and zoom — which has been available on the Motorola Milestone’s launch in Europe.
Some see a Google phone as putting the other Android players at a disadvantage. I believe otherwise. I think that Google is simply accelerating the Android mobile field to raise the bar seeing that the Apple iPhone is on nitro and seems unstoppable. Think of the Android players as a flock of long distance flying birds in triangular formation — birds taking turns to take the front so that others can take a breather. This is going the distance and what is definitely needed if Android wants to overtake the iPhone in the near future.
It looks like that the Android-based Motorola Milestone aka Droid is not yet the best we’ve seen from Motorola. From tipped rumor published by BGR, there seems to be some clue from China that there is going to be yet another Android-based mobile phone from Motorola far better than the Droid. So far the specs are a bit sketchy.
It looks like that the rumored Motorola mobile phone will sport the same 850×484 screen resolution but this time the display will be 4.3 inches in size. The Motorola Droid is just 3.7inches. The other juicy specs include an HDMI port (wow!), 1080p video (another wow!), 8-megapixel camera (this seems to be standard these days). And get this — 9mm thick (or should I say THIN). The mobile phone is codenamed Mirage or Shadow thanks to a tip from China. This is really going to be a very exciting year for the Android open mobile platform!
The emerging smartphone technology has really been ramping up. This 2010, the race to the top for world domination will be fiercier than ever. The competition is much like racing cars. I can also remember the time when Microsoft stepped up the competition on Palm with it’s PocketPC platform for the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) market back then.
First of all, I want to make it clear why I consider the iPhone on top. I have always believe that when people start comparing smartphones (or connected phones as I call it here), most of them compare apples with oranges. They forget that the iPhone has only been around for about 3 years while competition has been at it for a while. Also, the iPhone for all purposes is a single model/brand mobile phone while it’s competitors offer several models that are sometimes inappropriately consolidated into one for comparison purposes which I consider lame.
Another highly anticipated Android phone, this time from Acer, is the Acer Liquid A1. The Acer Liquid A1 joins the ranks of the new breed of Android smartphones that sports a high resolution 800×480 3.5inch screen and the fast Snapdragon processor. Unlike the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 which seem to be expected next year, the Acer Liquid A1 will start shipping this November.
Sony Ericsson has finally announced the Android based Xperia X10 mobile phone. The Xperia X10 boasts of an 854 x 480 pixel display, a phone memory of 1GB and supports up to 16GB external storage with an 8GB microSD included in the package. What’s alarming to me is that from the official Sony Ericsson page, it says that the screeen is only capable of displaying 16,536 colors — IS THIS REALLY TRUE, I hope its an error ‘coz I can just imagine trying to watch movies using a screen that can only display 16000 colors. Checkout the screen capture from the Sony Ericsson web page below: Continue reading …
I was able to get a copy of the upcoming Tweeteev for the Android open mobile platform so I took it for a spin to find out what these guys are busy doing. The copy I got was still alpha quality so some of the things you’ll read and see on this post may change. With all the twitter clients around the net, I got curious as to what Tweeteev can offer to Twitter users. Continue reading …
Developing software for mobile phones is such a challenge! Not only do you have to deal with the wide variety of hardware, you’d also have to deal with the different platforms available. Imagine trying to make your mobile application or game available on the Symbian, Java, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone OS, Blackberry, Danger platforms! Continue reading …
It looks like a couple of Android updating issues have cropped up recently. One of them is regarding users of the T-Mobile G1 mobile phone. I4U has posted an article saying that T-Mobile G1 users may not be able to get updates beyond the current Android version 1.5 due to phone memory limitations according to an Android developer. Continue reading …
