Tag: android

Samsung Windows Phones look too much like Samsung Android Phones

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Got to love the alleged view of the UK mobile networks:  Citing an “extremely reliable” source, [Professeur Thibault] first goes on to address the absence of a Focus S equivalent in Europe which is apparently due to carriers’ unwillingness to stock a device that looks so similar to the Galaxy S II. If there were ever a good incentive to not be lazy with design for Samsung, that would be it…and it really does look to have gotten to them. The source goes on to say the leading OEM is ready to release new models this year for Europe and that, “they should be

Android isn’t fragmented, it’s differentiated (and is not at war with Eurasia)

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Eric Schmidt: Differentiation means that you have a choice and the people who are making the phones, they’re going to compete on their view of innovation, and they’re going to try and convince you that theirs is better than somebody else… Fragmentation, however, means that you have an app and it runs on one device but not the other You know, everyone can drive a truck through this argument, but polite society means you could never ask Schmidt the exact question to get an honest answer in an interview

Samsung have only sold seventeen Android tablets…

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…or maybe they’ve sold eleventy-million and one. That’s the problem when you don’t tell people your sales figures – we’ll start to make them up. Charles Arthur of The Guardian: And yes, for journalists it is frustrating to be driven to roundabout language such as “believed to be the world’s largest smartphone seller”. I’m far from the only person to have been frustrated by this today; I know directly of two others on different publications who gnashed their teeth over precisely this topic and the misleading tweets from Samsung Mobile SA. If Samsung thinks it’s the world’s largest smartphone seller, then I’d

The year of Android? It’s really the year of Froyo

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Put aside ice cream sandwiches, gingerbread tablets and other bits of Android candy, it was 2.2 that ruled 2011, reveals The Guardian: The version running most Android handsets in 2011 was “Froyo”, aka version 2.2, which was released in May 2010. And next: the version that looks likely to dominate 2012 is “Gingerbread”, aka version 2.3.x, which has overtaken Froyo. As for “Ice Cream Sandwich”, aka version 4.0, which was released in November/December, who knows when that will dominate. (Honeycomb never had a chance – it was a tablet-only version.) And who’s running all these Froyo devices? The high-end Galaxies and

The ICS Kindle Fires will help Amazon

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And there we go – a bit later than I expected, but Amazon Kindle Fires are being flashed with clean Android ROM’s, in this case of 4.0 and the Ice Cream Sandwich build. To be honest this was always going to happen, and I think the few hundred Fires that will be flashed won’t worry Amazon. Bezos will be happy with the extra PR and marketing going out there to help sell more catalogues Kindles for his digital store. It’s building mind share, and it gets over the idea that the Kindle Fire is the only true Android tablet in the

Firmware updates and manufactured anger

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I’m not sure if the news that Samsung won’t be providing an update from Android 2.3 to Android 4.0 for the Galaxy Tab 7 and the Galaxy S is (a) a huge big stick to beat them up – and if I had bought the Tab on a twenty-four month contract in August I’d be raising a very big eyebrow; or (b) the perfect example of “if the hardware is doing what you need it to do, not what you want it to do, then chill.” Maybe it depends on which will bring in more page views?