Announcing the launch of our first Android app: SmarToucans
Today is an exciting day in our lives. We launched our first Android game, SmarToucans. This game is targeted for preschoolers and kindergartners. You can see some screenshots below:
It runs on Android version 1.5 (Cupcake) and above and has been extensively tested on the Droid Eris. It is available right now, absolutely free in the Android Market. So, go ahead, download and make a preschooler or kindergartner in your life a SmarToucan.
Note: If you do download, drop me a comment here letting me know which phone you are using and also I would appreciate any feedback.
Google Nexus One Reviewed
Happy New Year! Here is the first review of the Google Nexus One which will be announced tomorrow at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The reviewer certainly likes the Nexus One with the only downside to it being the camera which does not take as good photos as the iPhone. Also, in their benchmark test against the Motorola Droid, it seems Nexus One is faster. Originally there were rumors that Google might come out with earth-shattering pricing model. But, over the weekend, leaks suggest that Google will follow conventional pricing of $179 with T-Mobile contract or $530 unlocked. This is not a way to take on iPhone, especially launching on T-Mobile, given that the Android Marketplace is still in its infancy.
Google’s Nexus One Android smartphone is, of course, not yet officially announced, but the first review of it has already appeared on the Web.
Sure enough, we’ve seen many leaked photos, videos and previews of the handset, but this is the first time when an actual review is published (at the NexusOne blog) – although it’s missing some important parts.
As you’ve probably heard before, the Google Nexus One is thinner than the iPhone and you have to actually touch it and hold it in your hands to see that it feels “incredible”.
Also incredible is the Nexus One’s 3.7 inch WVGA AMOLED touchscreen display when it comes to image quality and crispness. Unfortunately, for some reason Google didn’t include multitouch into this phone.
The Nexus One comes with 10 Live Wallpapers – which you can choose to put on the homescreen. They don’t actually do anything useful, but they’re animated and that’s why they’re cool. Even with an animated wallpaper, the phone is very fast – thanks to the 1GHz Snapdragon processor and the 512MB of RAM.
The handset obviously features a 3.5mm headset jack. It was tested with several headsets, and it looks like “the sound quality is on par with the iPhone” – thus “average.” The Nexus One’s speaker (located on the back) is also “pretty good.”
The Nexus One’s battery is on par with the iPhone’s – it died after 12 hours of heavy usage.
According to the reviewer, the 5MP camera featured by the Google Nexus One is not as good as the iPhone 3GS’ camera, because it doesn’t use “natural colors” and you “have to play around with the settings more to get the perfect picture”.
Even so, the Google Nexus One is probably the best Android smartphone until now. And speaking of which, here’s a benchmark test with the Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid (graphics, CPU, Memory and Filesystem):
A downside of the Nexus One would be the fact that the Android Market still hasn’t got great games – like the App Store has. Anyway, I’m sure that there will soon be lots of iPhone-like games for Android, especially after more awesome hardware like the Nexus One has will be launched.
There are many other nice things included in the Nexus one, like the voice to text option, proximity sensor, and the Car Home app – read about them in the full review found at the NexusOne blog.
And remember, Google is hosting an Android event tomorrow, January 5, 2010, and it’s likely that it will officially announce the Nexus One then.
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Google’s Nexus One – What are they thinking?
Over this past weekend the story broke that Google has developed a new phone that it is giving its employees to play. The Nexus One, as it is called, is being positioned as a “innovations lab”, according to Google.
Today, we hear that Google is in serious talks with T-Mobile to introduce Nexus One. This G-Phone is built by HTC and looks strikingly like the HTC Passion without, of course, the HTC logo. All this makes me wonder what Google is thinking?
First off, why does Google see the need to branch out into hardware. Imitating Apple in trying to control the complete user experience is not good enough reason as they are already late to that party having already open-sourced their operating system. If they have some legitimate reason for getting into hardware, starting out with a look-alike phone of a publicly available (or soon to be) phone is not the best strategy to launch a new product that is going to bear your name in such a competitive market.
Also, if Google is going to compete with its Android partners, I wonder how long they will tolerate that. Now, I truly believe that 2010 will be the year of Android, however, this is a fast moving market and both consumers and the hardware makers are fickle. Google will have to tread carefully so as not to antagonize its partners.
Finally, is Google ready to be a hardware company? So far they have been outsourcing the actual manufacturing of the phones. And it will work if they have a handful of devices. But, then they need to think of all the other things that goes with standing behind the hardware from support to logistics to marketing.
Motorola’s shiny XT800 shows off its Android
Motorola is certainly trying to prove that there is some life in it still. And if these photos are true, it seems like it is doing a mighty fine job of coming back from the dead. Let’s see how long that vitality lasts.
Could this end up being the prettiest Android device to date? We don’t want to call it before we have it in our own two hands, but China Telecom’s likely entrant from Motorola — the XT800 — is looking better than ever in these live action shots unearthed by Chinese site tgbus. What’s interesting here is that Moto’s reusing the font first seen on the Droid’s dock standby screen for a new home screen date / time widget, but the old-school Power Control widget below it has us believing that we’re looking at an older Android 2.0 build (or heck, who knows, 1.5 or 1.6). It’ll apparently have a 3.7-inch WVGA display with 720p playback and, as we’ve mentioned before, an HDMI-out for some serious multimedia street cred. It’s still unclear whether this is being thrown around internally as the Titanium, Zeppelin, or something else entirely, but whatever — Verizon, Sprint, bring it on over, alright?
Motorola’s shiny XT800 shows off its Android originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
2010: The year of Android
As 2009 comes to close, everyone is playing the predictions game, including me. So, here are my predictions for the new year.
1. 2010 is going to be the year that Android comes into its own. There is a lot of device movement behind it and we shall see a true iPhone challenger coming from the Android camp. Every major device manufacturer that is part of the Open Handset Alliance is going to come out with dozens of Android handsets. Also, we will see Android being deployed on devices other than Smartphones. Though it remains to be seen how Google positions Android versus its Chrome OS.
2. Android Marketplace is going to be next big goldrush for the app developers. The legions of Java developers are salivating at and furiously developing apps for the Android marketplace. Given Google’s free-for-all approach to the marketplace, I think that apps for Android are going to explode in 2010 and probably surpass the iPhone app store by 2011 unless Apple makes a drastic change to its App approval policy.
3. 2010 will see the introduction of data bandwidth caps and tiered pricing. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, AT&T is already making noise about how 3% of its data users are hogging 40% of the bandwidth. I believe that AT&T is getting ready to introduce data bandwidth caps and tiered pricing as early as Q1 of 2010.
4. Microsoft will make a major push to regain marketshare in 2010. Microsoft is at crossroads here, should it pursue a closed-wall approach like Apple or should it follow Google’s path. This is a long-shot prediction but I think Microsoft might end up acquiring a major player to disrupt the iPhone and Android hegemony. Though RIM, Palm and to a small degree, Motorola are likely targets, but I would not be surprised if Nokia and Microsoft partner up to develop or extend Windows Mobile.
So, there you go. These are my predictions. Stop by and let me know what you think or what your predictions are.
NYTimes.com: AT&T: Tighter Control of Cell Data Usage Ahead
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Rumor: Touchscreen BlackBerry slider in the pipeline?
Cool, if this rumor is true, this would be a new and interesting form factor for Blackberry.
Yay, rumors! Today’s fun rumor comes courtesy of one Mr. Shaw Wu, a Kaufman Bros. analyst, who believes (thanks to his sources in the supply chain) that a BlackBerry 9900 has not only hit the prototype phase, but also features an entirely new form factor for RIM – a touchscreen slider.
The mystical BlackBerry is said to be some sort of Storm-meets-classic-Blackberry-meets-slider concoction. As IntoMobile points out, the above patent image clearly gives some hint at what a legitimate BlackBerry slider could look like.
The purported next-gen ‘Berry is expected to be revealed sometime in 2010. But until we see an actual prototype (come on Mr. Blurry cam, help a brother out!), this is all just pure speculation for the time being.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Content Discovery a Lucrative But Dangerous Place for Operators
Qualcomm has an interesting take on the mobile content discovery market based on a survey it conducted recently in UK and US. The survey indicated that consumers were willing to make purchases on their mobile phones if the content was easy to find. The operators could provide more relevant content to mobile users using their location and other personal information but they have to tread lightly because too much use of personal content could be viewed as invasion of privacy and turn users off the service.
Mobile network operators can boost data revenues by providing personalized apps and content experiences for their subscribers, according to a report released today by Qualcomm. But the carriers will have to walk a fine line between being helpful and being invasive as they try to take their customers by the hand.
According to the San Diego-based chip maker — which is touting Xiam, its mobile content discovery technology — 63 percent of users polled in the UK and U.S. said they’d spend more time accessing or purchasing content if the stuff they were looking for was easier to find. Four out of five respondents said difficulty obtaining content is “a major problem,” and users estimated they would spend an average of an hour more per week and $8 more per month on mobile data if their content was personalized.
Such difficulty is especially easy to appreciate given the ways most users search for content on their phones. The two most common ways to look for mobile content are using search engines or typing in URLs on the device, Qualcomm said — methods that can deliver headaches more quickly than they produce accurate search results.
There’s no question that discoverability is a huge problem on the mobile web, and carriers — with their established billing mechanisms and strong content partners — are indeed well positioned to help their users spend money. But they’re also likely to be seen as intrusive by some, and as flat-out invading users’ privacy if they try to target content by tracking user behavior and purchases. And they’re sure to be resented by some users who figure their mobile company already takes a big enough chunk of change every month. There are opportunities to subtly suggest content their users might actually pay for, but carriers will have to tread very gingerly as they approach those subscribers.
‘User Experiences’ to drive future smartphone market growth: InStat
InStat today put out a report on the worldwide smartphones trends. According to this report, smartphones of future will have a different user experience than today’s smartphones. InStat expects that this new user experience driven smartphones will increase competition and shipments will increase to 412 million in 2014.
One key feature that InStat survey respondents would like in their future smartphones is accelerometer. According to InStat, of the 412 million shipped in 2014, 340 million smartphones will have accelerometer in them.
Another observation in the report is that 52% of the cost of building a smartphone goes towards the display, baseband and app processors, and software & licensing. Though one pecularity about this observation is that InStat feels it is unjustified. However, to me, that is the cost of developing a smartphone, in other words, that is the cost of putting “smart” in the smartphone.
This report is available for sale at InStat for $3,495.
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