26
Feb
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Google Adds Play Store Carrier Billing To Telenor In Norway And Beeline In Russia

Posted by in News

Update: It looks like Telstra has had carrier billing for a couple of months, and Google is just now getting around to updating the support page. Thanks to Adam Ricket (@onlineadr) for the heads-up.

Good news, Aussies: your mega-carrier Telstra is now in Google's good graces when it comes to billing for apps and other purchases on the Play Store. Just select carrier billing during the checkout process, and the purchase price will be added to your next phone bill instead of your credit or debit card.

Customers of Telenor in Norway and Beeline in Russia, you can also spend your kroner and rubles via your phone bill.

25
Feb
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Google Play Alternative Yandex.Store Available Worldwide With 50,000+ Apps, Yandex.Shell Upgraded With 3D UI

Posted by in Applications, News

So you want more than Google Play can deliver, and the Amazon Appstore leaves you cold. Russian Google competitor Yandex is here to help: they've just launched their own branded app store, creatively titled Yandex.Store. The APK is a freely-available download for any Android device, and after a standard account setup process, you've got access to an impressive selection of mainstream apps. Big titles like Angry Birds, ES File Explorer, SoundHound, Twitter and Opera Mobile are all sitting on the front page. Beneath that is a cache of apps 50,000 strong and growing.

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The vast majority of apps on display are free, but there are paid options as well, with support for credit card and cell phone bill payments from dozens of countries including the United States.

12
Feb
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LG Announces L Series II, Mid-Range To Low-End Phones For All

Posted by in LG, News

While the Nexus 4 may be the LG handset getting everyone's attention, the company does have other market segments to think about. The L SeriesII (so that's what happened to the other letter from the Optimus G) fills that need with a trio of handsets that will debut with the Optimus L7II in Russia next week. The phone comes with a 4.3" 800x480 IPS display, dual-core Qualcomm processor and Jelly Bean 4.1.

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Here are the full specs for the L7II:

• Chipset: 1GHz Dual-Core (Qualcomm MSM8225)
• Memory: Up to 4GB eMMC / 768MB RAM / Micro SD
• Display: 4.3-inch WVGA IPS
• Camera: Rear 8.0MP with LED Flash / Front VGA
• OS: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
• Battery: 2,460mAh
• Size: 121.5 x 66.6 x 9.7 mm / 122.2 x 66.6 x 9.7 mm (Dual-SIM)

Following that initial release, the L3II and L5II (I'm noticing a familiar pattern here) will arrive.

11
Dec
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Have You Heard? Play Books And Movies Are Out In St. Petersburg (And The Rest Of Russia)

Posted by in Google, News

It seems like we can't go more than a week or two without hearing that one of Google's content services has rolled out to a new country. Today, Russia is getting in on the action with Play Books and Movies now available throughout the country. You can purchase books like normal, and movies are available both for rental and purchase.

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Prices for movie rentals start at around 49 rubles (USD$1.60) and purchases start at 99 rubles (USD$3.22). There are a number of major studios on board, including many American companies such as 20th Century Fox, NBC Universal, Paramount, and Sony, as well as local production houses like Central Partnership (Централ Партнершип).

26
Jan
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Four New Phones Join Samsung's Galaxy Family: The Ace, Fit, Gio, And mini

Posted by in Devices By Manufacturer, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Fit, Galaxy Gio, Galaxy Mini (Tass), News, Samsung
Last Updated: May 14th, 2012

Samsung is well-known for its ubiquity in the feature-phone market, and it's starting to look like they'll be employing the same assault-on-all-sides approach with Android phones too. As if they aren't struggling already to keep their phones up to date, Sammy is now digging a deeper hole with today's announcement of four budget-oriented devices set to prop up the rather premium Galaxy S.

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Galaxy mini

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Starting from the bottom, we have the Galaxy mini, intended to be a "first smartphone" for those crazy, hip youths you keep reading about. Not quite sure where the fun springs from in a 3.14-inch QVGA device, but Samsung is betting heavily on the "flashy color stripe along the side" to shift units.

05
Oct
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[Updated] Google Starting To Flip The Switch On Purchasing Paid Android Market Apps In New Countries

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, Games, News

Last week, Google announced that over the next 2 weeks, support for purchasing paid apps was coming to 18 more countries: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan.

This morning, reports are trickling in that the switch has been indeed flipped, at least in some of these countries. So far, we've been able to confirm Sweden, Denmark, and India. Tightly coupled with today's rollout is a Market update that converts all application prices to buyers' native currencies.

In case you were wondering why the Danish and Swedish currencies are the same, I did some research and found out that "ca." means "approximately," and both Swedish and Danish currencies are shortened as "kr" - Swedish krona and Danish kroner or krone.

11
Aug
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Android Trojan Created, Sending Premium Text Messages From Russian Devices

Posted by in News

It’s been an interesting week so far… Steven Slater decided to set the bar ridiculously high for those looking to make dramatic exits from their workplace, we learnt that school is in fact spelt ‘shcool’ in North Carolina, and Android got a wake up call in the security department.

It was bound to happen at some point; as Android proves to be as popular as ever, it will be targeted by more malicious developers looking to exploit users of the platform. This particular trojan, identified as Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, is being spread around by text message.

How does it work? According to Kaspersky, users who receive the text message are prompted to install a 13kb application, which claims to be a media player.