06
May
2011-05-06 23h19_01

Android Continues Enormous Market Share Growth, Samsung Keeps Top Spot Among OEMs

Posted by in News
Last Updated: August 20th, 2012

In case you thought Android's extremely fast-paced growth was being exaggerated, comScore's latest report on mobile market share might just convince you otherwise: From December 2010 to March 2011, Android not only kept its first place position among mobile platforms in the US, but it shot up 6 percentage points - far greater than all other platforms.

In fact, the only other platform that had growth was - predictably - iOS, with a 0.5 point increase. RIM, despite holding second place, dropped a staggering 4.5 points, while Microsoft and Palm both fell by 0.9 points. The gap between Android and second placed RIM is now at over 7 points, and is continuing to grow.

14
Mar
f-0-eb15f766fedf77187c11f05c82fc74caf13854ec

[Review] Wave Launcher Is Like Having WebOS On A Phone That You Actually Want

Posted by in App Reviews, Applications, Apps/Games, News, Reviews
Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

WebOS may catch a lot of flack because it never really took off but it does, in fact, have some really awesome features. One feature was the card view multitasking, which has already found its way onto Android. Another cool thing it did was that wacky swipe-up-from-the-bottom launcher gesture. Well, folks, guess what there's an app for now. It's called Wave Launcher - and it's great.

Wave Launcher's beauty is in its simplicity, just like its WebOS predecessor. You simply touch the bottom edge of your screen and swipe up. As you swipe up, so does a bar of five or more applications for you to select.

09
Feb
0,1468,i=290294,00

[Poll] HP's New TouchPad Is Hot, But Is It Enough To Lead You Astray?

Posted by in Editorials, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

HP's recently announced TouchPad is a genuinely exciting device - there's no question about that. In fact, with such features as a dual-core Qualcomm CPU and the fancy new "Tap to Share" technology, it might just be the most serious competition Honeycomb tablets will face in the first half of 2011, aside from a certain Apple product.

But is it enough to cause you, dear Android Police reader, to second-guess the XOOM or G-Slate? I know it isn't enough for me - and here's why.

146907-HP_TouchPad

Just look at the TouchPad - its design makes it clear that what HP has created is essentially the iPad's twin sister.

27
Oct
image

Android Absolutely Destroys Apple, Microsoft, Palm, And Blackberry In WSJ's "Who Makes The Best Mobile OS" Poll

Posted by in News, Off-Topic

Last week, the Wall Street Journal posted a public poll asking its readers to pick the best mobile operating system maker. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Palm, RIM/Blackberry, and Other were valid options, with Apple leading at about 55% at the time. Noticing this, Android Police along with reddit and other media publications issued a call to action:

image

The next day, Android and Apple traded places, and the former started leading by a small margin.

Fast forward a week, and I decided to check back with the poll to see how it is doing... I will just leave the following here without any commentary - the results speak for themselves*:

image

What can I say?!

05
Oct
portrait

[App Review] Graffiti for Android Improves Text Entry, Old-School Style

Posted by in App Reviews, Applications, Apps/Games, Reviews
Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Reviewed version: 2.0.4
Requires: Android 1.6 or newer
Cost: Free

I have fat fingers. There. I said it. With my old Sanyo Katana, it wasn’t a problem because I would just multitap and tap and tap to enter text. But when I finally made the jump to a smartphone, I quickly ran into a stumbling block with the virtual keyboard.

The HTC Hero has a pretty compact screen, especially in portrait orientation. Trying to hit letters on that tiny virtual keyboard drove me crazy, particularly since I usually touch type and find hunting and pecking my way across a QWERTY keyboard difficult.

08
Jul
android_vector

Android On The Move: Google Now Controls 13% Of The Smartphone Operating System Market

Posted by in News

Today, comScore released its mobile phone market share figures today for May 2010 (the figures take a while to compile), and the results bode very well for Google. Among smartphone operating systems, Google’s Android now holds a 13% share. While this may not sound huge, keep in mind that only 3 months prior in February Android controlled only 9% of the market. The figures and changes, below:

Mobile OS Feb. 2010 May 2010 Change
RIM 42.1% 41.7% -0.4
Apple 25.4% 24.4% -1.0
Microsoft 15.1% 13.2% -1.9
Google 9.0% 13.0% +4.0
Palm 5.4% 4.8% -0.6

Meanwhile, every other smart phone operating system has lost ground.

27
May
matias duarte

Matias Duarte Leaves Palm To Join The Android Development Team

Posted by in News

It has been reported that Matias Duarte, the man responsible for the look and feel of Palm’s webOS, has left Palm to join Google as User Experience Director for Android.

Duarte was the Senior Director of Human Interface and User Experience at Palm, and introduced the design of webOS at the company’s keynote in January 2009. Before leading the webOS design team, he was Vice President of Experience Design at Helio.

What does this mean for Android? webOS is well known for its seamless multitasking capabilities and card-style interface, which looks great. It would definitely be a great addition to Android, as it offers a closer look at the apps that are currently running, as opposed to a collection of icons.

11
Apr
HTC Palm

Editorial: Palm, Inc Now For Sale. Will HTC Buy Palm For Patents, To Port Pre To Android, Or Both?

Posted by in HTC, News

Palm Is For Sale

According to Bloomberg, one of the top financial news sources in the world, Palm has hired an investment banking giant Goldman Sachs to arrange a sale of the company, at least according to 3 people familiar with the situation (read: anonymous informants/insiders).

HTC and Lenovo are listed as potential bidders in a bidding that may happen as early as this week. Dell is also mentioned but said to have passed on making an offer.

Palm has been in financial trouble for years after its PDA and smartphone products had been overtaken by competition. The Pre, released on June 6 2009, was touted to be the silver bullet that would pull the company out of bankruptcy.

26
Mar
Android statistics

Android Usage Skyrockets Across The Board In February 2010 - Apple, RIM, Palm, Nokia Fall

Posted by in CLIQ / DEXT (Morrison), Dream, Droid (Sholes), G1 (Dream), G2 (Vision), Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Magic, Motorola, myTouch 3G (Magic), News

AdMob, one of the world's largest mobile advertisement networks, posted a report (PDF) yesterday citing various mobile related statistics for the period of February 2009 to February 2010.

We've looked through all the boring stuff and pulled out the interesting highlights (you all like highlights, don't you?).

The Highlights

Here are the highlights that we've cherry picked out of it for you (the data is year-over-year where applicable):

  • AdMob currently serves over 15,000 mobile websites and applications and has received 14.1 billion (!) requests worldwide in the last year
  • The number of smartphones went up 13% from 35% to 48%
  • Smartphone traffic overall went up 193% (data transferred, number of requests)
  • Non-smartphone phones share went down 23% from 58% to 35% (yup, soon everyone is going to have an PreiDroidberry of sorts)
  • Android was the fastest growing operating system, up 22% from 2% to 24% (!!!)
  • The top 5 Android devices by traffic were:
    • Motorola Droid
    • HTC Dream (G1)
    • HTC Hero
    • HTC Magic (MyTouch 3G)
    • Motorola CLIQ
  • Among the number of requests from smartphones, all non-Android devices posted a decline while all Android ones were up (except for the G1, which was the first generation Android and doesn't really count).

25
Mar
Motorola robot screen test

MOTO Labs Team Hires C-3PO To Perform Screen Accuracy Tests. iPhone, N1, Eris Best; Droid, Pre, Storm 2 Worst

Posted by in Droid (Sholes), Eris, HTC, Motorola, News, Nexus One (Passion), Videos

Did you know Motorola has a Labs team that does cool things and then blogs about them? They're pretty cool like that. Correction: interesting piece of trivia - did you know MOTO Labs actually has nothing to do with Motorola? With a name like MOTO, one could think… well never mind, I apologize for the mistake.

The Finger Test

For example, in January they tested the screens on 4 flagship mobile phones by swiping a finger across the screen in a drawing app and recording the resulting patterns, complete with photos and a video.

The phones in the first test were:

  • Apple iPhone
  • HTC Droid Eris
  • Motorola Droid
  • Google Nexus One

The iPhone won with the straightest lines (no surprise here - the iPhone screen feels like butter), Eris and N1 were *kind of* accurate and the Motorola Droid was the most inaccurate.