As a side effect of the version fragmentation that Android suffers from, even the latest apps tend to support Android versions a few years old. For example, most of Google's apps nowadays have a minimum requirement of Android 4.1 or 4.2. If you're still stuck on 2.3 Gingerbread, at least you'll get to keep using WhatsApp.
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Welcome back to another week of the Android Police Podcast. To catch us live on Hangouts On Air every Thursday at 5:30PM PST (subject to change as per the calendar widget below), just head over to androidpolice.com/podcast. For the unedited video show, click here. As always, we'll take your questions at 530-HELLO-AP and also at our email address: podcast at androidpolice dot com.
On this week's episode: Android Marshmallow 6.0 is official! We also go back and take a look at Gingerbread in our ongoing Android history series, chat about Google's new OnHub Wi-Fi router, and BlackBerry's rumored Android slide phone.
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Hurry up, ladies and gentlemen! If you sprint to Walmart between November 20th and 26th, you can apparently pick yourself up a very vintage Moto X running none other than Android 2.3. Those on-screen buttons and #HOLOYOLO accents look pretty spiffy on this fine Gingerbread device, don't they?
Curiously, on November 29th, the same phone not only drops to half price for Black Friday, it also gets a ninja upgrade to Android 4.2 and a $100 Walmart gift card (which is actually a pretty good deal since you're effectively netting 50 bucks - after signing a contract, of course).
The mention of "Android 2.3" also made it to the printed circulars (thanks, Stephen Scott!
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It may not get the tech world's heart all a-flutter to hear that MetroPCS is launching a Huawei phone, but the world needs budget phones and networks too! The duo is teaming up this time to bring no fewer than four gees to consumers for the first time in a Huawei device. The Activa 4G is a modestly spec'd phone, with a 3.5" HVGA display, a 5 megapixel camera, and running Android 2.3. It's still sad to see phones shipping with Gingerbread, but on budget devices, it's not as unexpected.
The device, predictably, is pretty cheap. At a normal price of $250, the phone comes down to $150 after a $50 mail-in, and another $50 instant rebate.
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The Amazon Appstore Android app was just updated to version 2.3, which finally raised the maximum application size that can be downloaded over a mobile connection from 20MB to 50MB - something we've been asking the company nonstop for over a year. I understand why they set the default to 20MB, but enforcing a max, especially on 4G (Sprint has unlimited 4G, for example) didn't make sense. After all, it's my data, I should be the one to decide how to use it. Can you say "finally" a few more times? I can.
The 50MB limit still leaves that unlimited option to be desired, but it's a huge improvement.
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It seemed like Google completely abandoned one of its most useful Android apps - Chrome to Phone, which I personally use almost every day, but an unexpected update that showed up in the Market today shows us they still care about it, even if only a little bit.
The new version 2.3 comes over a year after 2.2 hit the Market back in December 2010 and brings a few improvements, the most important one being a crash fix after receiving copied text. This bug has plagued Honeycomb users for as long as I can remember (Honeycomb tablets didn't even exist when the app was last updated), so I'm very glad to finally see it fixed.
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Update: The link to the update is now working. Get on it!
Infuse 4G owners have been chomping at the bit for some Gingerbread love since the device's release in the middle of last year, and it seemed this morning they were finally going to get it. A moderator at the AT&T forums posted up the typical changelog marketing spiel, chocked full of customer benefits and exciting new fonts like 'Choco Cooky' and 'Cool Jazz' (I am not kidding).
Unfortunately, it seems AT&T neglected to inform Samsung that it was update go-time - the link to said update 404s. Whoops. Of course, if you have Samsung Kies installed, you should be able to check for updates using that.
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Budget phone. The very sound of those two words, together, makes me slightly ill. In fact, it makes me almost immediately seethe with a sort of "nerd-rage." I hate the way budget phones are peddled onto the tech-illiterate by commission-motivated hucksters at "Big Four" carrier phone stores. I hate seeing people get locked into 2-year contracts because they got a "great deal" on a smartphone. "It was free!" they'll say, and that the nice sales representative (his name was Jimmy) kept them from buying "something they didn't need," because they walked in with a firm spending limit and they weren't going to budge!
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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.
We also get a look at the end success rate of Honeycomb (a tablet-only version of Android), which achieved a mere 2.5% piece of the Android pie since the first Honeycomb device release back in February. Android 1.5 and 1.6 (Cupcake and Donut) have continued their march toward extinction, commanding only 2.1% of the Android population total. Android 2.2 has remained relatively steady at 35%, but is clearly on the downtrend.
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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.
With Ice Cream Sandwich finally revealed, Android has gone through its seventh major iteration. How has Android changed? What better way to illustrate Android's evolution than its home screen, the hub of user interaction. Here's a look at the face of Android over the last 3 years.
Android Version 1.5: Cupcake
Cupcake was step one for what was, at the time, Google's recently acquired mobile operating system Android.
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