Posts Tagged ‘Android’

Preview - In 2010, Billy May released an animation about an imaginary Mozilla Open Web smartphone. Called Seabird, the phone was praised as an evolutionary smartphone that, albeit imaginary, included the vision for a phone that not just copies Apple’s iPhone, but incorporates Mozilla philosophy as well as a vision that is years ahead of the products we are using today. Mozilla’s B2G, a mobile operating system that will be demonstrated at MWC next week, could carry that vision and emerge as the dark horse in the smartphone arena.

Chrome for Android was released with about 3 months delay (or more than 3 years, depending on your view) on Tuesday. Google hopes to replicate the runaway success of the desktop version of the browser, but the browser is less appealing and less accessible to the user than Chrome, which makes this mobile browser an inconclusive product that, in addition, lacks compelling features over rivals.

Today we learned about RIM’s new Blackberry BBX operating system, which carries the burden of turning around the sinking Blackberry ship. BBX goes against iOS and Android, as well as Windows Phone, which has not been doing too well either. iOS and Android are the envy of the industry and the examples of successful operating systems. They are being chased, and fortunately for them, their success isn’t fully understood yet.

Whoa! That went much faster than we expected. Google will be ready to release the first Chrome version for Android with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich next week, we are told. The desktop version of the browser is making big steps as well, adding pipelining support for yet another round of performance improvements as well as UI changes that now include a content settings tab and finishing touches for its profiles support.

Opera is currently showcasing its browser ideas at the Upnorthweb conference in Oslo, Norway. the company demonstrated a hardware-accelerated version of the desktop browser, which we are scheduled to get on Thursday. There is also a significant emphasis on mobile browsing and bandwidth savings.

A patent filing by Google sheds light on the company’s speech recognition technology in Android and provides at least one clue why the engine works better on mobile than on desktop platforms and why it has a clear lead over the iPhone: Google uses a secret, predictive pre-recording approach which has an ingenious component to it, but may upset users for invasion of privacy.

Google is heading toward the finish line for the first release of Chrome for Android. According to a developer post, Google has set a build target for the browser. The new browser is now evolving into a powerful cross-platform application that may help Google to aggressively push Chrome as a gaming and entertainment platform.

This last year could have been titled the parade of iPad wannabes. We had a huge variety of Android-based products hit the market around the marginal Honeycomb “Vista” version of Amazon and only the Samsung Galaxy Tab did very well, which was because it was basically an iPad clone (so it became a litigation magnet). We had HP and the disastrous attempt to bring out the TouchPad, a product that clearly had potential, but may have contributed to getting Leo Apotheker fired. We got RIM’s Playbook, which seemed to be more of a gravestone for RIM than anything else. Now we have the Kindle Fire: Is it on fire or should Amazon just burn it? It is likely going to come down to how well Amazon builds demand for this product.

Intel and Google recently reaffirmed their relationship at the Intel Developers Forum by announcing they will optimize Android for the Atom platform. While some believe that Intel needs Google more than the other way around in order to compete against the ARM onslaught, I disagree.

Intel apparently dropped its efforts to continue the development of the MeeGo platform without a proper burial. Instead, Intel flaunted its relationship with Google and Android during the opening day of IDF Fall. Future Ultrabooks may get 10 days of standby power on a single battery charge.

We have been huge fans of the idea of a Kindle Android tablet, as we believe that only Amazon has a platform that is powerful enough to challenge Apple’s iPad and iOS ecosystem. But who would have thought that Amazon is brave enough to cripple its tablet?

Samsung could be acquiring the rights to WebOS to build a defense against Google’s Motorola acquisition and embarrass HP at the same time: Samsung could not possibly screw the old Palm crew more than HP did.