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Remember: You aren't just buying a phone, you're buying an accessory ecosystem

Ryne Hager

Pretty much the first question that I am half-jokingly asked once a new acquaintance discovers my profession is: What phone should I buy? In fact, when you boil it down, that's what most of this job really works out to. All this news, all these reviews, most everything we write is with the goal of educating our readers to answer that question for themselves. But one thing we often neglect to mention when you pick out a new phone is that you're buying a lot more than just one piece of hardware. 

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Amazon, Not Content With Duplicating Everything Else Google Does, Releases A Mobile Ad API

Eric Ravenscraft

When Android first came out, there were a lot of concerns about an open source OS. One of the biggest ones was, what if a company takes Android, strips everything Google out of it, and builds an entirely new platform on top of it? Well, Amazon seems dead set on making sure we know what that's like. The company has already built its own Appstore, content delivery services, and closed hardware on top of Google's baby. Now it's taking aim at Mountain View's money maker: ads.

The new mobile ads API will allow developers to easily embed advertisements in their apps.

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Happy Fifth Birthday, Android: An Exploration Of Android's Five Year Journey To The Top

Eric Ravenscraft

Hi, Android! Sorry your present is a little late, it took a while to wrap it. Five years ago yesterday, Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt joined other members of the newly-formed Open Handset Alliance to announce the Android operating system. Back then, we were still nearly a year away from an actual Gphone (and yes, people really called it that) and Sprint and T-Mobile were the only US carriers even interested. Now, Android is installed on over 400 million devices, nearly every carrier in the world wants a piece of the action, and the platform as a whole is the single largest mobile OS ever.

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Google On Acer's Canceled Phone Launch: 'Non-Compatible Versions Of Android, Like Aliyun, Weaken The Ecosystem'

Liam Spradlin

Last night, we reported on some pretty strange rumors concerning an Acer product launch set to take place Thursday in Shanghai. The rumor was that Google had put its foot down over Acer's announcement of an Aliyun-powered smartphone, and threatened to "terminate all android-related cooperation" with the Taiwanese manufacturer should it proceed with the CloudMobile A800's introduction.

In case you missed the story, Aliyun is an OS developed by Alibaba Group, China's largest Internet firm by transactions. The OS, while not explicitly marked as an Android fork, is pretty closely related to the original platform. The OS boasts a reliance on cloud storage, and can even run Android apps using a "virtual machine."

Today, looking to clear the air, Google released a statement on the issue, indicating that yes, the search giant had put its foot down.

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Take Me Back, Baby: 3 Reasons I'm Staying With Android And Coming Back To Android Police

Chris Dehghanpoor

If you’ve been an Android Police fan for a while, you may recognize my name from some of my past posts. Beyond that, I was mostly active behind the scenes until I dropped this little bomb when I departed earlier this year.

The reaction to that article was pretty much what I expected - it was divisive and the conversation surrounding it was often heated. Ultimately, though, my goal was accomplished: people were talking about the problems surrounding Android and software updates.

You may be wondering, “If that was your departure letter, why the hell am I reading this? Go away iFanboy”.

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[Updated: It's Back] Android Market Currently Experiencing Downtime - A Sign Of Things To Come?

Jaroslav Stekl

Update: And it's back, with no noticeable changes. Nonetheless, we'll be sure to let you know if and when Google announces something Market-related - stay tuned!
 

We don't want to jump to conclusions here, but it's February 2nd - the day of Google's Honeycomb- and "Android ecosystem"-related event, and the Market is currently experiencing downtime. It makes perfect sense given the rumors we've been hearing about an upcoming update to the Market, though it could, of course, be nothing more than scheduled maintenance. We hope we'll find out exactly what this is about later today - whatever it is, we'll keep you updated (pun intended)!

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

Artem Russakovskii

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:

image

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

Source: Icantdrawfeet

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