John Grubber:
“Nilay Patel, covering MWC for The Verge:

It’s no secret that Android tablet sales have lagged far behind Apple’s iPad, and Google’s planning to do something about it. In a meeting with reporters today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Android chief Andy Rubin called the 12 million Android tablets sold thus far “not insignificant, but less than I’d expect it to be if you really want to win,” and said that “2012 is going to be the year that we double down and make sure we’re winning in that space.”

Rubin said that the biggest problem for Android on tablets is “there’s no organized way for consumers to recognize it as a viable platform,” and that Google wants consumers to see its tablets as part of the broader Android ecosystem.

In a separate article, The Verge confirmed with Rubin that Google’s “activation” numbers include each unique device only once, and don’t count based-on-Android-but-not-using-the-Google-experience devices like the Kindle Fire or Barnes and Noble Nook.

Apple has sold a little over 50 million cumulative iPads to date. Just me or does it seem like you see a lot more than five iPads per Android tablet in the wild? (A guess: a lot of junky 7-inch Android tablets gathering dust in drawers.)”

Anybody who’s (a little) interested in this market can see Android tablets lagging badly behind Apple in the iPad market.
On the other hand, they’ve probably seen it coming; you can’t just bust in on other’s established turf and thrive within a year, leaving the owner far behind.
But it’s true (the emphasis above is mine!), lots of crappy tablets out there sitting in a drawer just because its owners are buying with their eyes closed, priced, not quality oriented like Apple. That’s the differentiation here.

Looking for a SMS filtering application turned out to be a VERY tedious job.

I was looking for a simple SMS filter, a filter able to be cached (not running in the background!) and to search the contacts and the Inbox – there are SMSs I want to filter without a visible number. Later I realized it’s possible to get the number by simply calling “back “from inside them. And I couldn’t find one.

I had to settle for Call Control, which came closest to my needs and also filters calls. A pretty good feature, which I will never use, because I use the built-in “divert to voicemail” feature inside ICS.

All these apps competing with each other and offering dozens of features, just because the others do the same. That’s all. Most of them are ridden with ads and ask you to register (database build-up) for a quick buck. I am not sure they test it as a Beta! Energy efficient? Are you kidding? Look at the screenshot above. 4% for a day of usage. Other apps don’t even show-up in here.

The Android apps have to grow-up some more.

I can see why Apple is holding them accountable and sometimes doesn’t approve some developer’s apps. Some of them barely have the skills to do an app, forget about polished, Premium products.

It looks like Google decided to release a new (albeit small) update of its rocking Google Music for Android!
This one brings some bugs fixes, hopefully some I encountered along the way in the last 3 months.
If you’re not in the U.S, you can still get it by searching for the term in the title followed by .apk and follow the instructions. Of course, by now you should’ve managed to use a proxy, in order to make it work outside U.S. If now, search the web or ask me!

You know what they say: it depends to whom you’re talking to. For them, it’s a fragmentation issue. Since the beginning Google wasn’t able to steer the O.E.M manufacturers into the right direction, a.k.a “release-phones-with-the-latest-OS”. Like this guy said, it’s only business; you want the latest OS, get a new phone!

And then, there’s the rest of us (me included!) looking at this from a positive point of view. Ice Cream Sandwich was launched less than 2 months ago, 3 days before the Galaxy Nexus took off and it’s already close to 1% in “market” share. Well, more like 0,6%, but that was a few days ago!:-) It’s also important to note that there are three versions out there and they are split on only two devices: Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the last year’s hit, Samsung Nexus S, which is not even completely updated yet! Even so, that’s a huge leap in a very short time!

Again, let’s look at the chart above and think positive: Froyo (2.2) and Gingerbread (2.3) make up the most of today’s Android OS phones out there: ~85%.

Fragmentation? Fahgettaboudit!

via Android Central and Android Pit

Too many times we’re interested in reading the news. As so many times we do it on the go, while attending to other, more important things we need to do.

While I can always “favorite” the items in Google Reader and read it at some point in the future but it’s not gonna offline it for you, which means you can’t read it at some point in the future without an Internet connection. And that’s the strength of Read It Later: it’s downloading the link’s content for future, offline reading, while getting rid of the ads, related stories and other junk interfering with the act of reading.

The most awesome part is the integration into more than 250 smartphone apps, the support for almost all known browsers in the world and the seamless synchronization between them.

There’s a free version with a limited number of items you can save (which served me just fine!) and a Pro version, if you want to save more items and support the developer.

Here.





Looks like ICS is getting traction among the developers! Some are rushing to launch new versions compatible with ICS – hell, Dropbox for Android was long over-due anyway!

Here are some of the improvements:

•Favorites: quick offline access to files

•Bulk upload photos and videos

•Rename files and folders

•Single-tap access to all file and folder actions

•Improved gallery view

•Upload from and export to local storage

•Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements

Grab it directly from here:

http://db.tt/ZAfACYmq

Source: Dropbox Forums

It’s been years now since Google updates our phones from one version to another. The operators, too! And they still manage to screw-up our phones.



Nexus S and ICS this time.

Just yesterday, while reading the news, I found out about an Android application that will allow you to send free SMS. It’s called JaxtrSMS and it works. Just like the description brags it allows you to send worldwide SMS’, even coming from your number, not some shoddy service over the Internet. It uses data and some complain that 5 MB/day is a bit much when you’re not sending many SMSes.

I registered with my name and mobile number and I’ve tried it a few times on various numbers. By the time I pressed the “Back” button to exit the app the SMS was delivered! JaxtrSMS is a bit slow, its blue background comes a bit hard down on my eyes, especially when the writing is pale white. Your recipient’s replies are coming into the SMS Inbox as usual.

What I really found out afterwards is what pisses me off: the application will send a separate SMS or add ads to your initial SMS urging the recipient of your message to signup for the free service! And I can’t find a disclaimer letting you know about this when you sign-up for the service. I used to use a service like this more than 10 years ago and paid for it. The free portions also contained an ad, but it was the link to the service, 20 chars or so.

Of course, I unistalled the app right away.

It is a nice option but not for me. And the fact that it’s coming from Sabeer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail, makes no difference; in my eyes it’s still spam.

             12 days ago I was happy to report that a 2.0 version of Google Plus for Android has been leaked! I also shared it to a lot of people, finding about it very early on a Saturday morning, thus having a high share of re-posts on Google Plus.

I’ve used it ever since up until last week, when suddenly I got a “corrupt” message when I tried to open the “People” application on my Desire HD. To my horror, I was unable to access any other contact in my phone except for the ones in the call logs! Being a  HTC core application, I knew I was in trouble.

I guess I don’t have to mention I spent the next hour trying to find a way to get into my People app and get the contacts. To no avail. I even installed 3rd party contacts apps only to receive the same error no matter what I did.

I tried contacting HTC on Twitter: no reply. I figured “whatta hell, they’re busy, screw this, I’m reinstalling”. Everything. Relying on HTC Sense’s backup. Bad idea. I ended-up reinstalling everything from scratch. Then the phone wouldn’t log on GTalk, so I couldn’t use the Market at all.

Long story short, after 2-3 Master Resets and cleaning up the 8 GB card I was informed that the G+ 2.0 was the culprit. I don’t know why but I guess it has to do with IceCream Sandwich and the way it handles the new “People” application in the Android OS.

So back to 1.08 (updated, nice!) and I kinda miss the 2.0 improvements and nice design.

I wanted to ask if any of you had that issue? Because I know for a fact that not everyone had this issue (I know a Froyo user who had no problems) ; the 2.0 version had a bug with not receiving pictures in the new Chord application and had to be uninstalled.

Picture courtesy of FreeFoto.

Saturday morning is always better when you find-out about a new update for the newly born Google Pus for Android!

It sports a new look: the notifications were moved from the bottom of the screen to the top. The notifications number is bigger and rounder on the edges.  The “Messages” section was renamed “Chord” to differentiate from all the others.

Every section of the application was changed or improved: “Profile” has 3 sections now – Posts, About and Photos. You can now browse all your data. “Circles” shows you everyone in your Circles based on your choosing, individual “People” in a different section, o.. You can also make a new Circle right from the phone.

I also noticed the performance was improved. The timeline started almost instantly compared to 1.07 I rocked till now. The app also starts-up faster when the icon is pressed.

I am sure there will be bugs, they always are. For now I have only one wish: I hope they fixed the phantom

notifications. They always show up, no matter how may times you read that them and it’s quite annoying.

Is this the Ice Cream Sandwich version? Might be, I found no indication in those regards.

Version 2.0.0, build 10000 and you can find it here.