Recently in Android Category
ARM has opened the Solution Center for Android,
a resource for designers and developers of ARM technology-based
products running on Android, the open source platform from the Open
Handset Alliance.
The ARM Solution Center for Android (SCA)
offers developers new to Android or to ARM, the widest range of Android
resources for ARM architecture. SCA members come together to share
their expertise, solutions and services, including:
- Development tools.
- Complete Android solutions.
- Android software components.
- Android services.
- Android training.
The Droid by Motorola has been well-reviewed but reviews of the camera were not so clearly positive. Why we ask? It may be because the reviewers were taking photos with a dirty lens. There have been several camera rumors circulating about the Droid. One rumor propounds that a camera update was secretly uploaded (but not by aliens) that fixed the camera. Another rumor contends that if you wipe off the lens which shipped with a oily protective film on it, the photos will get better. Then there's an autofocus on a cycle glitch.
The easiest rumor to check was the dirty lens theory. Since, we have a review unit of a Droid by Motorola and a cloth, we tested the dirty lens fix.
Here's an Android phone of the future. The new Saygus VPhone is an Android equipped smartphone
with America's first nationwide two-way video calling. The VPhone won
the prestigious "Best of Innovations" in the "Wireless Handsets"
category against top smartphone makers.It is epected to be available as a CDMA device throughVerizon's Open Developmen Initative (ODI). The Saygus VPhone has two cameras - a 5 MP main camera with auto focus and flash and a VGA forward-facing camera for video calling - and provides a host of other features including WiFi, USB and Bluetooth tethering allowing up to eight devices (i.e., laptops, MIDs) to connect as an access point, USB host and client capability, slide-out keyboard with a large keypad and raised keys for fast and easy typing, larger battery to provide up to four hours of video calling and seven hours of talk time, and screen resolution twice that of the iPhone.
Using the major cellular networks in the U.S., Saygus has achieved two-way cellular video calls at 24 to 30 frames per second (fps) in excellent resolution with its proprietary low bandwidth video calling technology. The company has tested its technology on other devices and other cellular networks implementing video calling at 2.5G EDGE data rates. Saygus plans on providing quality video calling to other devices and networks, making video calling available to cell phone users around the globe.
BlackBerry(Storm, Curve, Bold Bold), Android, iPhone Free Football Apps 2Day: National Football Post
Attention football fans, before you head out for Thanksgiving you must be sure that your can get the latest football news on your BlackBerry (Pearl, Curve, Storm, Bold), iPhone, or Android/Droid. National Football Post (NFP) will drop-kick you through the holidays with their new free NFP Mobile app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. NFP Mobile that delivers
instant, real-time access to NFP sports content, news and information.
NFP Mobile for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone features all of NFP's popular online content with easy-to-navigate tabs, including:
- Hot News and Rumors.
- Columns from NFP Experts (Matt Bowen, Jack Bechta, Robert Boland and Andrew Brandt).
- Notes from Lombardi.
- Fantasy Football News.
- Scouting Department.
- Daily Jolt.
- Team News - featuring a customizable tab that lets users get up-to-the-minute news on all their favorite teams.
Mobile analytics firm, Flurry, has tracked Droid sales to be 250,000 in its first week which they calll a strong
result for Motorola and Verizon. Although it was not as spectacular as the iPhone 3G, it showed the Droid is the fastest-selling Android phone
to date. Compared to the myTouch 3G on T-Mobile, Droid outsold it by more than four times. Verizon has nearly 90 million subscribers to T-Mobile's 34 million. Verizon has a $100 million campaign. Motorola forecastsits own Droid sales at one million through the end of the year or an ad cost of $100 per handset sold.
Flurry notes that Verizon's aggressive campaign adn 3G network advantage in key, populous regions of the country like the Northeast, position the Droid as a legitimate challenger to the iPhone.
We told you that there was a Droid invasion starting on November 6. Now there's a map for that. WHERE, a location-based app that is being used on Droid smartphones has setup a website that shows locations where Droid has landed. WHERE is a location-based mobile application which provides information about places around you.
The top Droid cities are: New York, NY, Los Angeles, CA, Washington, DC, San Francisco, CA, Philadelphia, PA, Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, Chicago, IL, Riverside, CA, and Phoenix, AZ. 12 percent of Droids are located in New York, 6 percent are in Los Angeles and Washington, DC has 5 percent.
WHERE offers a video of the Droid invasion over the first few days. Currently it looks like Droids have been landed in most of the major cities in the United States. Previously WHERE reported that 25% of Android users had downloaded WHERE.
Some reviewers noticed that the native Android 2.0 operating system on Droid by Motorola didn't sync media. Many makers of Android phones, including Motorola, have made their own syncing software. Earlier today, we published an article on how to copy music, files and photos to and from Droid and your computer. If you are a media user, we highly recommend that you download Motorola's free media syncing app Motorola Media Link.Motorola Media Link for Droid makes copying, syncing and transferring files from your Droid and computer much easier. Motorola Media Link is a PC app that connects your Droid phone with any PC and the web so you can manage, secure, share and explore content from the desktop.
Motorola
Media Link, powered by Nero allows you to move and manipulate pictures, videos, music, and more.
You can transfer files such as photos and videos and organize them into albums;
sync playlists and music from iTunes and Windows Media Player.
For photo-takers, you can crop, rotate and edit images on your PC and then transfer them back to
your mobile device, automatically reformat video for optimum playback
on your phone.
You can also download content like media, ringtones, and wallpaper from integrated stores and third-party sites.
Media Link by Motorola is socially-networked and has functions to upload
photos and videos to sites such as
Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.
If you Droidites are new to the Droid universe of open source smartphones, you may be befuddled by the process of getting your photos onto your computer or copying music files onto Droid. Although, reviewers raved over the Droid by Motorola, they were not pleased with its native syncing capabilities, because an "it ain't no iPod."We had a little frustration in our meager attempt to copy a photo from Droid onto a PC computer. Then we realized we could actually read the manual, which was a little confusing but we figured out how to copy music files to Droid, as well as copy photos from the Droid to a computer. Then after we completed the process below, we found out a much easier way to sync files on Droid by Motorola. If you are planning on doing a lot of music and photo transfer we suggest you download and use Motorola Media Link.
There isn't automatic recognition by Windows or Mac of the Droid, as a USB drive. It has to be mounted.
- First, make sure that your memory card is in your Droid.
- Connect your Droid to your computer using the USB data cable that came with the Droid. (You'll have to disconnect from the charging plug.)
- Go to Notifications (by touching the status bar at the top of the screen and dragging it down). A list will drop down where there is connected icon. On the update's list you will also see email notifications, as well as update notifications.
- Touch the "USB connected" notification.
Droid has landed and Droidites are flocking to the web while Droid dukes it out with iPhone (which may or may not put a scratch in iPhone sales). The Droid, however, doesn't scratch easily when hit by foreign invading keys.
Droid is a iPhone contender, in CNET's prize fight between the iPhone 3GS and the Droid by Motorola, there was no winner, they deadlocked in a tie. Droid received great reviews for its brilliant screen and great features such as turn-by-turn GPS. The list price for Droid is $199, however, we recently discovered that the cheapest price for the Droid is through Wirefly.
Clicky is tracking Droid mobile browser market share among all browser enabled phones and the Droid already has reached 1.59%. Every thirty minutes they show the daily web browsing marketshare for mobile phones of interest, which is calculated from all mobile traffic across the 150,000+ sites that are tracked by Clicky.
That equates to a lot of web browsing on the new Droid phone. Some suggest it has to do with the excellent voice search and QWERTY Keyboard on the Droid.
As of this publishing time:
Wed Nov 11 2009
| Web browser Marketshare (US) |
Web browser Marketshare (non-US) |
|
|---|---|---|
| iPhone | 53.83% | 64.95% |
| Android | 6.81% | 3.41% |
| Droid | 1.59% | 0.00% |
| Everything else | 39.36% | 31.64% |
That's a whole lot of Droid web browsing going on and equates to 23% of Android-powered browsing.
New Droid owners don't have to worry about their Droids being scratched by keys in their pockets or purses. A Droid-owner has tried to scratch his Droid with keys and left the display free of scratches, the paint on the metal rim did scratch, a little. A video follows.
Droid has landed, sales are brisk and Verizon will fix any problems Droid owners experience with future updates.
Both the Droid by Motorola and Droid Eris by HTC are expected to get over-the-air (OTA) updates on December 11. Leaked Verizon documents indicate additional features and fixes to bugs and glitches.
The Droid Update Should:
- Add nesting folders in MS Exchange.
- Add a new notification icon while sending email.
- Fix a lock when large invite lists are edited.
- Allow users to be able to update calendar requests via email.
- GMail glitch which only shows picture attached when synced.
- Delayed notification of a new Visual Voice Mail.
- Wrong date and/or time stamps when sending videos over Bluetooth.
- Glitch in camera auto focus.
- The counter for the number of characters in a message.
- Delays of incoming calls or messages after activation.
"I see the first few days as encouraging. There seems to be pretty good demand -- they've taken the right steps and picked a good partner with Google on the Android side," said McKechnie who thinks that Motorola and Verizon Wireless will sell up to one million Droids by the end of the year.
While reviews of the Droid Eris are starting to appear, reviewers raved over the Droid by Motorola. We recently discovered that the cheapest price for the Droid is through Wirefly.
As our readers know, Wirefly often has great deals and coupons for new customers. They have now gotten in the Verizon Droid invasion and appear to have the best cheapest deal for Verizon renewals and new customers, purchasing an Android Droid by Motorola from Wirefly. They are offering special Wirefly: Droid by Motorola from Verizon Wireless deals which appear to be changing but are less expensive and cheaper than buying directly from Verizon.
Instead of a rebate, when you buy from Wirefly you get an instant credit. It makes sense because Best Buy is also giving an instant credit in lieu of a rebate. Usually, the best offers are for new customers but this time Wirefly also includes contract renewals.
There were previous reports that you could get a Droid from Wirefly for $99 with a high-priced plan. They also said that you can also get that offer with only a $39.99 voice plan.
When we checked online it showed $149.99 for the a Droid either for new customers and or contract renewal. Wirefly is advertising price "too low to show" ads for Verizon Droid by Motorola. They are also offering exclusive Android tutorial videos. If you click around the Verizon website, it shows the Droid Eris by HTC at $49.99 with free shipping and an instant discount for new contracts and contract extensions.
Droid is still getting good reviews and is packed with features.
Droid momentum is growing and news story abound. Sales appear to brisk, tethering is coming as well as an increase in the Early Termination Fee from Verizon.
Droid is still getting good reviews and is packed with features.
In Droid news, although the first day didn't see very long lines, several reports confirm that in Saturday Verizon outlets were downright crowded.In Palo Alto, customers had to wait in line to touch demo units. In Chicago, late at night people were waiting for their Droids. Let's think about it, only iPhone-aholics who get a hit offer the sleeping in line experience are crazy enough to sleep in the cold outside a store while Verizon customers, realized that they could order online, or they may have been working on Friday and went to the store on their day off, Saturday.
Droid from Verizon comes loaded with a 5 megapixel camera. Once you take the photos, wouldn’t be nice to share them and edit them?Adobe launched Photoshop.com Mobile for Android software. The Android application equips consumers with quick and easy image-editing tools, color adjustments and instant photo-sharing capabilities. Photoshop.com Mobile optimizes the camera-phone experience by allowing users to browse for their photos online and on their phone, directly from the application. The application is free and available at the Android Market.
Photoshop.com Mobile for Android offers essential, user-friendly photo-editing tools like crop, rotate and flip. The Soft Focus filter can be used to create a subtle blur effect, and for performing color adjustments such as exposure, saturation, tint changes and classic black-and-white.
The free Slacker Radio app is available for Android phones. Music lovers can now listen to their favorite Slacker stations anywhere they happen to be on their Android-powered smartphones.
Owners of Android smartphones can now enjoy the Slacker music discovery experience, including creating a nearly unlimited number of custom stations, over 100 expert-programmed Slacker genre, seasonal and spotlight stations, or over 10,000 artist stations.
Slacker also gives listeners the ultimate music resource by providing artist biographies, album reviews, station fine tuning, “peek ahead” song previews and song lyrics. In addition to marking songs as favorites, listeners can also ban songs and artists to create perfect custom radio stations on their phones.
The free Slacker Radio application for Android is available immediately in the Android Market or by visiting Slacker.com on any Android smartphone. DROID by Motorola owners can find Slacker quickly in the Verizon channel of the Android Market. The Slacker Radio app works with the free Slacker Basic Radio service, Slacker Radio Plus and Slacker Premium Radio subscription offerings.
Verizon customers using the new DROID by Motorola can locate the free Slacker Radio application quickly by visiting the Verizon channel of the Android Market on that phone.
The Slacker application has been optimized for the new DROID by Motorola, DROID ERIS by HTC and the HTC G1 and HTC MyTouch Android handsets. For more information please visit http://www.Slacker.com/everywhere.
Droid has landed at Verizon and he's a quick view of the news and reviews. Through Twitter reports there have been lines at Verizon stores, today, but nothing that major. There were 100 people in line in New York City for a special midnight store opening for invited customers."Lots of white males btw 25-40 in the Verizon Wireless Droid line this morning. A little Star Trek-" noted one Twitter user.
Verizon sent out an email this morning, for future Droidites, suggesting you can beat the lines by by buying online. If you buy a Droid online don't forget to use If you use the Wireless and Mobile News' online purchase coupon-link for Instant Phone Rebate Only Available with Online Purchase then you don't have to wait for the rebate.
The Droid by Motorola has already received good reviews and is built for the Android 2.0 operating system that is power-packed with features that made the super-high-pixel Touchscreen explode. Features can be started with the touchscreen or the slide out QWERTY keyboard. The top features of this Droid include turn-by-turn directions and voice search. It is priced at $199 after rebates.
The Droid Eris by HTC is a touchscreen only smartphone that runs Android 1.5 and The has a customizable a seven-panel wide home screen to fill with different widgets and shortcuts. We uploaded a video of the Droid Eris, yesterday which gives a good overview of the Droid Eris by HTC.
Even industry analysts have gotten Droid Fever, iSuppli analysts suggest Droid could be the "Comeback Kid" for struggling Motorola. Their news release states, " Droid promises to reverse Motorola's fortunes in the cell-phone business."
Droid uses Google's Android Operating System (OS). Android is expected to account for only 2.4 percent of the total smart OS market in 2009. However, Android is expected to enjoy the fastest growth in usage of any of the smar-phone OSs, with shipments in 2013 rising at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 118 percent from 2008. This will give Android a 9.1 percent share of the global smart-phone OS market in 2013, boosting it the No.-4 ranking, up from a last-place seventh ranking in 2008 and 2009.
There are many things contributing to Android's success. Android is licensed by seven key handset OEMs, including No.-2 Samsung, No.-3 LG, No.-4 Motorola and No.-5 Sony Ericsson. The OS also enjoys support from eight global wireless operators, the most among all the seven major operating systems vying for a share of the smart-phone market. In addition to Verizon, Android is supported by Sprint and T-Mobile in the United States, as well as by China Mobile in China.
A popular new feature in Android 2.0 is free turn-by-turn navigation, which is available on Motorola's Droid. This will make the device more compelling in the smartphone market and poses a major challenge to the Portable Navigation Device (PND) industry.
Reviewers are raving over the Droid's touchscreen display, which uses capacitive touch technology following in the footsteps of Apple's iPhone. Shipments of capacitive touch-screen displays are expected to nearly quadruple from 2008 to 2013.
"Droid is potentially a game changer for Motorola," said Tina Teng, senior analyst, wireless communications for iSuppli.
"Motorola now is no longer just emphasizing slick form factors, such as
it did with its RAZR handset. The company now has focused on the
hottest segment of the global mobile handset market--providing
compelling smartphone products that are usable and expandable through
third-party applications. Droid also has capitalized on the
trend toward smart-phone widgets, which allow users to customize
products according to their own personality."
Today, Verizon officially announced the Droid Eris, an Android powered touchscreen smartphone from HTC. It's a lot like the HTC Hero and uses Android 1.5. It has been rumored that will be upgradable to Android 2.0 at a later date. The major differences between Eris and Droid is that Droid has Android 2.0 and a QWERTY keyboard.
The Droid Eris by HTC comes with 8 GB MicroSD card, Bluetooth, 5 megapixel camera.
The HTC Droid Eris has 
a
528MHz Qualcomm process, a 320x480 screen. This
touchscreen-only smartphone also has HTC enhanced Touch Sense UI,
visual voicemail, Wi-Fi, MS Exchange Sync, Media Uploader (for Facebook,
Flickr, Picassa, Gmail,) Google services, news widgets, and Footpritns
Geo-tagging for photos. The HTML Browser supports Flash Lite.
The Droid Eris by HTC has a customizable a seven-panel wide home screen to fill with different widgets and shortcuts.For social networkers, DROID ERIS by HTC also organizes interactions by person, which makes it possible to access text messages, e-mails, phone calls and even Flickr streams and Facebook updates from a single contact card.
Ceaser Da Costa, the marketing-guy has uploaded a video of the Verizon Droid Eris that shows the customizable scenes and widget which looks very useful on the video. All the apps are backed up through Google and can be restored if you loose your phone. You can open multiple windows and applications which Ceaser demos in the video.
If you would like a live demo of Droid before it is released on Friday as early as 6:00 am. Verizon has uploaded a YouTube video that demonstrates some of the best aspects of the Verizon Droid by Motorola. You can view the video at the end of this article after you continue reading. The Droid has received good reviews and has some neat cool features, some of which you can see in this introductory video.
Marketing consultant Ceaser Da Costa reveals the physical aspects of the phone including the 3.5 mm headset jack and keyboard. He shows how easy it is to tap and drag a widget. It's easy to hold drag and drop icons.
He also demonstrates how use Android Market and the download folder so that you can download your apps again if you change phones. The voice search on Google Maps finds pizza places by just tapping and saying Droid.
YouTube viewing is fast. The alert plays "droid" and let you know when you get messages or updates. Mutli-tasking is shown from toggling from a browser, not losing your place while you are browsing. The Google Latitude app lets you know when your friends are in the area.
The Verizon Droid is landing on earth November 6 as early as 6:00 am and the momentum is growing. We've been using the Droid and discovered the best top most likable features of the this new Android smartphone which we call neat, cool and damn right amazing. The reviews have been good for the Droid by Motorola, but they didn't delve into delight that come from using the features of Droid.Voice Search - this feature is amazing, instead of typing a long url or several words, we just tapped the microphone and said, "Wireless and Mobile News" it Googled our words in seconds to show The Wireless and Mobile News website URL almost instantly. This feature worked for almost all major common news sites and words. The only place where it fell short is when we tried to find the popular feel-good app, "Feel-Goodies" which is a unique name and Googled up food places. The voice search also works for Google Maps which will show you where to go. To demostrate how well the voice commands work on Droid, Verizon, is letting people call an toll-free number to tell Times Square signs what to do.
Screen - this high resolution screen has been called stunning, gorgeous and brilliant. It's a 3.7″ WVGA 854×480 capacitive toucscreen with haptic feedback. It has excellent responsiveness and unmatched clarity. Verizon and Moto say it has DVD play-back quality and no matter how you phrase it is "lookin' good." The Verizon pr blurb notes that the screen "width of 854 pixels to reduce the need for side-to-side panning and more than 400,000 pixels total, DROID has more than twice that of the leading competitor."
New Google Maps - the turn-by-turn directions, layers of maps, turn Droid into a super GPS navigation unit. This Goggle mapping app comes with everything you'd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection. It includes popular Google Maps features including street and satellite views.
Web Browser - Google is about the web and so is Android. Reviewers raved about the super fast HTML 5 browser which you can also search by voice. You can even have multiple browser windows open at the same time.
Egnyte
introduced Blackberry and Android device interfaces that allow small
business users secure access to all their business files via their
Blackberry or Android-powered smartphones. Egnyte's on-demand file server enables both Mac and PC business users to have online file storage, file sharing and automatic backup in one solution. The new interfaces, which require no additional software installation on the device, leverages a mobile drive -- "m Drive" -- that lets mobile users access all of their data stored via the Egnyte file server.
For existing Egnyte users who use a Blackberry or Android-powered smartphone, the new user interfaces allow businesses and professionals to easily navigate folder hierarchies and open and share files using their Blackberry or Android device keypad or touch screen. Last year, Egnyte introduced an iPhone interface following the launch of the Apple iPhone 3G. Following its introduction, users quickly adopted the interface, illustrating the need for mobile data support, as more and more business professionals seek to complete work functions outside of the traditional office.
