ios - 11/12 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Sep

Appcelerator & IDC's Q4 Mobile Developer Report: Android's Hitting Its Stride, Likely To Conquer Electronics Landscape

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Apps/Games, News

In June, Appcelerator surveyed 2,700 mobile developers and published the results in a report that we covered. The June report showed that developers prefer to develop for iOS, but that they had a more positive long-term outlook on Android; fast forward three months, and Android has widened its lead in long-term outlook. Further, developers see Android as being more capable, more open, and offering better support for multiple devices.

After running June's report, Appcelerator wanted to get a better look at the "why" behind the results as well as a more in-depth look at how developers view a wider range of devices.

Sep

Nexus One Has Better HTML5 Performance Than iPhone 4, But Flash Is Still King

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Apps/Games, Froyo 2.2, News, Nexus One (Passion)

While trying to figure out the best way to develop a cross-platform game, developer Christopher Black created a simple HTML5 benchmark, which he then ran on a Nexus One (N1), iPod Touch 4G, and iPhone 4. For some further variety, he also tested Flash 10.1 on the N1. The test itself was simply a black ball bouncing, and the results were incredibly surprising: the Nexus One ran the animation 67% faster than the iPod Touch, and 81% faster than the iPhone 4.

Even better, the N1 managed to keep rendering the ball (albeit slowly) during zooming - not so for the iOS devices.

Sep

[Comic] The Difference Between Android And iPhone - This Pretty Much Sums It Up

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Off-Topic

Last Updated: September 26th, 2010

Found at the top of reddit's Android page today is this comic comparing the openness of Android to the closed ecosystem of Apple's iPhone and iOS. It warranted an immediate tweet, but since tweets are very short-lived, I decided to have it take a more permanent place on our site.

Here we go:

No editorial comments from me - I decided to reserve that role for you, our readers, in the space below.

Source: Icantdrawfeet

Sep

Fruit Ninja Now Available For Android

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News

We told you it was coming today, and indeed here it is - Fruit Ninja, one of the most popular iOS games just entered the Android world, powered by OpenFeint.

Download

You can download the game for $0.99 by clicking or scanning the barcode below:

A Few Notes

it is quite big - almost 14MB, but it doesn't yet support apps2sd in Froyo. I'm sure that is coming later
the graphics, physics, UI - everything is very well done. It's a direct port from the iOS version using the NDK (Native Development Kit) - not a Java rewritten version
in my opinion, the copycats, such as Ninja Kaka and Fruit Pirate are nowhere near as good
the new Arcade mode is coming soon - for now it's only available on iOS

Screenshots

Sep

Fruit Ninja Coming To Android Wednesday + New Arcade Mode [AppNation]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News

Last Updated: September 15th, 2010

Update: Fruit Ninja is now available in the Market!

At the AppNation conference today, I got a chance to talk to Shainiel Deo, the CEO of Halfbrick, a company most known for its best selling iOS game Fruit Ninja.

Fruit Ninja is an addicting game in which you try to slash as many pieces of fruit thrown in the air as possible, getting bonus points for combo slices, while avoiding bombs at all costs. The biggest appeal of the game is probably its excellent graphics, fluid movements, and the satisfaction of chopping all that fruit in half.

Shainiel made 2 major announcements:

The New Arcade Mode

The new Arcade mode is coming to the iOS version this week and the Android version in the future.

Sep

Nielsen Mobile App Report: Android Users Respond To Advertisement The Most + More [AppNation]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, News

I am live here at the AppNation conference in San Francisco, and after San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom's welcome speech, in which he tried to get a bunch of developers to make apps for the government for free (yeah, riiight), we are looking at a mobile report from Nielsen, called The State Of Mobile Apps.

Nielsen, one of the largest media research companies in the world, compiled a report containing a few interesting metrics, such as:

Most Popular Apps
Application Discovery Methods
Free VS Paid Apps
App Billing Preference
a few Advertising related stats

You can download and read the full report below, but before you do that, I wanted to highlight one metric that I found the most interesting.

Aug

Google Finance Website Gets Mobile: Revamped For Android (And A Certain Other Mobile Operating System)

Posted by David Ruddock in News

Google's Mobile blog (as well as their Finance blog) announced an update to the Google Finance mobile webpage on your Android (or... iOS) smartphone. The changes certainly aren't subtle: Google has streamlined finance to appear very similar to all the in-browser Google mobile web-apps. As an Android user, you may be asking why Google bothered - there's already a Google Finance app on the Android Market. The answer? The website, simply put, is just a lot more awesome.

And on the Froyo browser, it's also a lot more responsive and smoother than the Finance app. What's not to love?

The integrated search bar makes finding quotes a lot easier, and the fact that it's just a tab on Google mobile homepage makes it all the more convenient.

Jul

Motorola Will Not Be iBashed - Fires Back At Apple's Death Grip Claim With This Gem

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Droid X (Shadow), Motorola, News

When Apple released a widely criticized video of a Droid X death grip last week, Motorola suddenly found itself as a target of what could essentially be interpreted as a smear campaign. Here is the video for those who managed to miss it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJG7pbSRvJ8

Of course, the video followed a similar smear aimed at HTC's Droid Eris during a recent Apple press conference focused on antennas and reception. Clearly, Apple is not singling anyone out while trying to defend itself. The only problem is it's not comparing apples to apples (oh, the puns) - in fact, I'll leave the explanation to this very sane article by PC World.

Jul

AOL Chooses Android Over iOS For Newest Apps

Posted by Andrew Gould in Applications

Today, AOL released two new applications for Android as well as an HTLML5 web app for the other guys. The two applications, AOL Portal and AOL Daily Finance, are the latest in a line of mobile applications bridging platforms. The AOL portal app is the first application AOL has chosen to release on Android, but not on iOS.

When asked why the company chose Android over iOS and other platforms, David Temkin, VP of Mobile for AOL said “Momentum is the key reason.”

AOL is banking on Android’s momentum to carry their product to the greater body of users but also mentioned that an iOS version may follow the Android version in the future.

Jul

Fujitsu Developing Japanese Market Android Smartphone To Challenge iPhone's Domination

Posted by David Ruddock in News

MobileCrunch is reporting via Japanese site Sankei Digital [JP] that Fujitsu is planning on manufacturing an Android handset for the Japanese market. Apple currently dominates the smartphone market in Japan, largely because the Japanese smartphone market was fairly bland before Apple entered the foray.

Japanese phones have tended to focus on high portability, social connectivity, and gadgetry over advanced software or bigger displays. The iPhone changed all that, and created a market for devices with larger displays and modern smartphone operating systems. The iPhone 3G and 3GS last year accounted for over 72% of all smartphones shipped in Japan, and the iPhone 4 will likely be just as big a hit.