We pick up where we left off last week. Guru gets a used Rezound, Jere still doesn’t have an Evo 4G LTE
Show Notes
- In Other News
- RunCore’s new solid state drive offers built in wipe and nuke settings.
- London police will soon be able to extract mobile phone data in minutes
- US Department of Justice states citizens have a right to record police officers on duty.
- It makes perfect sense that Kodak had a nuclear reactor stashed in the basement
- Music labels force MP3Tunes into bankruptcy
- How to save the space program? Build the Starship Enterprise.
- Provider Press
- T-Mobile is offering new contractless pricing, 300MB/1-week $15, 1.5GB/1-month $25, 3.5GB/1-month $35, 5GB 1-month $50.
- Verizon’s CFO announces the end of grandfathered unlimited plans this summer, concurrent with the start of shared data plans. Customers will be forced to adopt new plans when they renew. Will this be better for some customers, or bad for all?
- T-Mobile states that customers don’t want shared data plans. ”Customers who pay more, should get more…”
- I paid Verizon $2027.57 to beta test their Galaxy Nexus for five months
- Jere’s HTO Evo 4G LTE has been impounded at US Customs by the ITC. The issue is over an Apple patent which covers how a smartphone reacts to contextual links for email addresses and phone numbers. By default now, there is a menu setting called App Associations to manually assign these links.
- Platform News
- Will Google be expanding the Nexus program to include multiple partners, and selling unsubsidized phones directly from the Google Play Store?
- Google is reworking the Google Play authorization system after issues arising from a new scheme that would only allow deauthorizing 4 devices per year. The system would affect people who continually deauthorize and reauthorize the same device…power users/rommers.
- OpenSignalMaps releases infographic on the 681,900 Android devices that downloaded the app. 599 distinct brands, 3997 different devices across 195 countries.
- Samsung now dominates Android sales, making it the number one handset manufacturer in the world at 26% of world sales. The iPhone, by comparison, has 23%. Nokia still has 20% of the world market.
- HTC and Samsung make up 86% of UK Android Sales, which is 50.1% of the overall smartphone market.
- Motorola advises ”… obviously we want the new release to improve our devices. If we determine that can’t be done—well then, we’re not able to upgrade that particular device.”
- China, the lone holdout, has approved the purchase of Motorola Mobility by Google.
- Speaking of China, retailers there are offeringa $74 miniature computer only slightly larger than a thumbdrive,with an AllWinner A10 single-core 1.5GHz ARM CPU, a Mali 400 GPU, and 512MB of RAM. An HDMI port on the exterior allows users to plug the computer into a television. It outputs at 1080p and is said to be capable of playing high-definition video. The device also has a full-sized USB port with host support for input devices, a conventional micro-USB port, a microSD slot, and an internal 802.11 b/g WiFi antenna. The computer can boot from a microSD card and is capable of running Android 4.0 and other ARM-compatible Linux platforms.
- Does my Android smartphone really need 2GB RAM?
- RIM, Motorola, and Apple seem to have found a compromise on the proposed nano-SIM standard.
- New DDR4 memory could mean reduced power consumption and performance for new tablets
- Android Game Developers…Innovate, don’t Emulate
- Study: Cellular tablets use 3x more data than smartphones.
- App News
- Alarm Clock Ultra, offering an array of customization options including puzzle disable, stopwatch, egg tim1er, etc. (Play Link)
- Turntable.fm is here. (Play Link)
- CoPilot now offering a free version, CoPilot GPS. No turn by turn directions in the free version. (Play Link)
- CloudOn released for Android – Create Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents on the go. (Play Link)
- Savored launches official app for Android, offers free reservations, discounted dining up to 40% off in select cities. (Play Link)
- Expensify updated, now with the ability to add trip itineraries. (Play Link)
- Google Maps, updated, brings Offers, Indoor Directions, 360 Panorama Views for Businesses
- Restaurant.com launches official Android app. (Play Link)
- Lookout updates Ad Network Detector to detect SellARing, which will play a 10 second ad whenever a call is made. (Play Link)
- Pocket 4.1 update now available, includes Page Flipping mode, improved dark theme and new sepia theme, and more. (Play Link)
- Evernote updated to version 4.0 with new look. (Play Link)
- New Firefox beta switches to native framework, now offers flash support. Try the beta. (Play Link)
- Chrome 19 released, offers tab syncing across multiple computers and Android.
- Twitter updated to correct sync issues and other bug fixes. (Play Link)
Episode 96 – Pouf-tastic is a post from Android Buffet Podcast – Hungry for Android? Get all you can eat at the Android Buffet Podcast…live on Mondays at 10PM Eastern. All Rights Reserved.
