As it does at the beginning of every month, Google this evening updated its Android distribution data to reflect a 7-day period ending on September 9th. The data shows Android 4.4 KitKat reach an all-time usage high of 24.5 percent, up from 20.6 percent last month. Jelly Bean continued its consistent decline, falling from 56.5 percent to 53.8 percent.
Like it does at the beginning of every month, Google this afternoon updated its Android distribution numbers to reflect a 7 day period ending today, July 7th. The most recent version of Android, 4.4 KitKat, saw a modest increase from 13.6 percent to 17.9 percent. Jelly Bean, for the first time ever, saw a decline as a whole in usage by 1.9 percent.
Samsung has announced that it has temporarily withdrawn the update to Android 4.3 for the Galaxy S3 after users complained about multiple problems, reports the BBC.
These included faster than normal battery drain, some apps refusing to work and alarms failing to trigger […]
“Samsung keep telling us that they will let us know as soon as they find a fix, but in the meantime I am left with a phone that is next to useless,” wrote one owner, Dylan Barlow …
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Following its November promise, Taiwanese handset maker HTC today detailed through its Facebook page the devices that will get Ice Cream Sandwich in March. The first round of upgrades will roll out by the end of March for the Sensation, Sensation 4G, and Sensation XE. The Sensation XL will upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich “soon thereafter,” the company noted. Additionally, other devices will get Ice Cream Sandwich upgrades “later this year,” including the Rezound, Vivid, Amaze 4G, EVO 3D, EVO Design 4G, Incredible S, Desire S, and Desire HD.
After posting a 26 percent profit drop for the holiday quarter, HTC warned it will scale back its 2012 roadmap to focus on flagship devices rather than spread itself thin developing, manufacturing and marketing dozens of short-lived phones. The company will make announcements at Mobile World Congress that runs Feb. 27 to March 1 in Barcelona, Spain. The rumor-mill thinks HTC will launch the Ville and Edge handsets at the show; the latter being billed the world’s first quad-core smartphone. The device should run Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip sporting four processing cores clocked at 1.5GHz.
Image courtesy of The Verge
Following a slew of announcements from Google yesterday culminating with the unveiling of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the accompanying software development kit, Android Beam, the new People app, the panoramic camera feature and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone (among other things), The Verge has published an exclusive, lengthy interview with Android’s head of user experience Matias Duarte. It’s a highly recommended read with revealing details and interesting insider perspective on Google’s arguably the most propulsive property.
Some of the more noteworthy highlights:
Android Honeycomb, which was Duarte’s first big Google project following his departure from Palm after the company was acquired by HP, was a lot like “emergency landing”, he said. It’s a platform which has “a flexibility designed into it that you don’t have to worry about when you’re doing a completely integrated device”. And why Google refused to open-source Honeycomb?
“On Honeycomb we cheated, we cut the corner of all that smaller device support”, adding this:
Honeycomb was like: we need to get tablet support out there. We need to build not just the product, but even more than the product, the building blocks so that people stop doing silly things like taking a phone UI and stretching it out to a 10-inch tablet.
People are fed up with “two decades of windows, and cursors, and little folder icons”, he says. The search company actually visited “shadow” users at their homes and workplaces to figure out how they interacted with mobile devices. What they found out was surprising: Android lacked emotional connection with its users who deemed the operating system overly complex. So they set out to build a wonderland of sorts, improving on Android’s typography by creating in-house a clean typeface for Ice Cream Sandwich dubbed Roboto. He then took a jab at Apple, calling the iOS design “juvenile” and likening it to web pages with “cartoony things hanging off a page”.
More tidbits below the fold.
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We’re but a day away from Google’s and Samsung’s major Hong Kong event meant to serve as a launchpad for the Nexus Prime, the first handset to feature Android 4.0 nicknamed Ice Cream Sandwich. Guardian reports that the handset is “expected to be released in the UK within the next four weeks, in time for Christmas”, without naming a source for their claim. Meanwhile, Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo wrote on Twitter that the Nexus Prime will land in Japan around November, boasting about it being “among the fastest” devices on the market.
An unlocked version of the phone is already showing up at third-party resellers, priced at about $750. The features allegedly include a powerful 1.2GHz dual-core processor, native 720p display, eight-megapixel camera on the back with 1080p video capture, support for NFC and more.
Google pushed back the Nexus Prime launch originally scheduled for Monday last week out of respect for Steve Jobs. Coincidentally, the new October 19 date collides with a celebration of Steve Jobs’ life due tomorrow in the outdoor amphitheater of Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. Apple will even close its brick-and-mortar stores for an hour so employees can watch the ceremony.
Sad news from the Android camp as both Google and Samsung announce (via Pocket-lint) that the Galaxy Nexus, also known as the Nexus Prime, will not launch at the Mobile Unpacked conference October 12 next Wednesday, as originally expected. The two companies provided no explanation for the delay apart from this official statement:
Samsung and Google decide to postpone the new product announcement at CTIA Fall. We agree that it is just not the right time to announce a new product. New date and venue will be shortly announced.
The CTIA conference runs October 11-13, 2011 at San Diego’s Convention Center. The publication speculates that the delay could be related to avoiding a likely media conflict if Steve Jobs’ funeral were to happen that day. The wording of the official statement, that “it is just not the right time to announce a new product”, supports the thesis.
UPDATE: Ina Fried over at the AllThingsD blog quotes unnamed sources who said Google and Samsung “just felt it was the wrong time to hold a launch event, as the world continues mourning Jobs”. Furthermore:
The decision to postpone things was made late last night at the top levels of both companies, sources said, with Jobs’ death being the reason. There are no delays with the product itself, sources insisted.
Samsung and Google later updated their original press statement, which now reads:
We believe this is not the right time to announce a new product as the world expresses tribute to Steve Jobs’s passing.
Another possibility, albeit much less likely, is an unknown patent issue that might need sorting out.
If you missed big announcements from today’s Google I/O 2011 keynote, don’t sweat – here’s your recap of key takeaways. Google executives first touted 100 million Android activations so far and about 400,000 new devices being activated each day. Other mind-boggling stats include 200,000 free and paid applications on Android Market and 4.5 billion downloads since Android’s launch less than three years ago. That was just a warm-up for big announcements, though…
The next Android release this year will be code-named Ice Cream Sandwich. Available by the fourth quarter of this year, its main goal is to bring a unified set of features to all devices. It’s Google’s attempt to solve the OS fragmentation issue. The company shared little details, but did note that the software will support standard USB peripherals, enabling any Ice Cream Sandwich-compliant device to work out-of-the-box with the stuff like keyboards, mice, trackpads, joysticks, game controllers and more.
Android Icecream Sandwich users will also enjoy all Honeycomb 3.1 enhancements, like holographics UI, multitasking UI, richer widgets and more. The new code will be available on an open-source basis, Google said. Another cool feature is virtual camera operator that can determine who is speaking to automatically zoom in on the right person in video chats. Ice Cream Sandwich will also ship with the new movies app designed for downloading and watching movie rentals from Android Market.
You can either stream or download movies to the device, with standard 24-hour viewing window and 30-day rental period. The Movies app will be part of the next Honeeycomb 3.1 software update, available now to Motorola Xoom 3G users via Verizon Wireless and on other tablets soon. The app will also roll out to Anroid 2.2 devices in the next couple of weeks, Google said.