latest
It has been more than five years since we said goodbye to the Android Market and hello to Google Play. You may have long since adjusted to the change, but there's been a version of the Android Market out there all this time. Google's putting an end to that soon, though. On June 30th 2017, the Android Market client on Android 2.1 and earlier will stop working.
Read update
One of the things that I love most about my Sony Z3 is its compatibility with Qualcomm's Quick Charge 2.0 technology. The phone takes forever to charge with a standard USB wall charger (like almost the entire night), but with a Quick Charge device I can bring it from dead to fully juiced in fraction of the time. I have chargers plugged in in various places throughout my home, but I only own one Quick Charger. Why do I have only one if I like it so much? Because they are way more expensive than a standard charger – or at least they used to be.Today, Amazon has the Qualcomm certified Aukey Quick Charge 2.0 18W USB Turbo Wall Charger on sale for just $11. That's $5-10 less than any other Qualcomm certified charger on Amazon and is about the lowest price I've seen on one of these high speed phone refuelers.
Pop quiz: How long does it take for a new version of Android to be widely adopted? A new version of Android comes out, AOSP updates, OEMs adapt it to a myriad of devices, and carriers test the updates. That process. How long does it take?
As an Android developer, the first thing I do when I set up Eclipse with ADT on a new machine is hunt down the Android source for the API level I'm working on.
Google has released the latest of its monthly Android version distribution charts, and for the first time Android 2.3 Gingerbread is present on over half of all Android devices. A milestone, to be sure.
Oh, Android. How far you've come since the days of the G1. Actually, tomorrow, October 22nd, will mark 3 years to the day that Android has been available on consumer handsets in the United States, and the G1 on T-Mobile was concepción.
As per usual, Google has updated their Android Platform Version Chart, which gives us a clear indication of how many devices are running each version of Android, based on Market usage. The results won't shock anybody, but they do say good things about the current state of fragmentation in Android. Froyo continues it dominance, taking over half of the chart, while Android 2.1 still remains strong with 35%, likely due in large part to the massive number of Galaxy S phones still running it. Our obsolete friends, Cupcake and Donut, continue to fall into obscurity, although devices running them are unlikely to be updated. Gingerbread is at a paltry .4%, thanks to the fact that the Nexus S is still the only handset running it (officially, anyway). It would be nice to see Gingerbread, as the latest Android version, rise considerably in the next two weeks, but that's unlikely - especially with Samsung still only focused on bringing Froyo to the Galaxy S line.
If you love devouring Android stats, Google's Android Platform Versions sub-site, which is updated about once a month, just got refreshed with the latest batch of data. Last month, Froyo ate up some 36% of the pie, while Éclair was found to be running on about 41% of devices, with the remaining 23% being taken up by Cupcake and Donut.
The latest Android platform numbers are out, and thanks to carrier support of updates (Verizon and Sprint, anyway) FroYo has made an impressive boost to capture 33.4% of Android devices. This isn't enough to upset Android 2.1, which remains on top with 40.4%, but it's a good sign of diminishing Android fragmentation nonetheless.
At this point, we'd consider it a joke to release a device with Android 1.5, but apparently, Dell thinks differently.
After today’s Dell Thunder leak, you may be excited to hear about a new Android offering from Dell: The Blaze. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to be interested in the phone – the Dell Blaze is running Android 1.5 with a custom UI, and is described as an entry-level device. So, while we don’t have any actual specs yet, we can determine that the screen is fairly small, my guess would be at the very top, 3.5”, but more likely around 3.2”.
Meet Andy: Android’s History In A Nutshell
There were many rumors that Google was exploring ways to expand its reach to device manufacturers with a focus on developing a handset.
Before Apple's iPhone and Google’s Android OS burst onto the mobile device scene in 2007, there were few significant advances in mobile technology. Frankly, "smartphones" (if we could even call them that at the time) were boring: they did little more than email, general messaging, picture taking, some basic apps and games, rudimentary internet browsing, and enterprise integration.