The HTC Merge is one of the most talked about handsets coming out this year. HTC this week announced that the phone will be available on multiple carriers, this Spring. None of the specific carriers have actually been announced, however.
The Merge has Android 2.2, HTC Sense UI, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 5MP camera with 720p video focus, and a3.8 touchscreen. No word on final pricing or a solid release date.
Via Engadget
Following in the steps of the HTC Evo before it, the Motorola Atrix 4G has been hacked to give root privileges before the phone is even available to buy. In more evidence that Android hackers are frequently out-pacing the creators of the phones themselves, the third post in the xda-developers thread where the root was announced was a half-sarcastic “why did it take so long?”
Right now, this is more of an academic achievement than a practical one for two reasons. First, the actual steps to obtain root privileges haven’t even been released to the public. Second, there is still a good chance that one of the main draws of rooted phones, custom ROMs, will be difficult to install thanks to an encrypted and locked bootloader.
While rooting your phone is highly discouraged (as it’s likely to cause an increased security risk, break all kinds of terms of service and make your carrier very unhappy) the speed of this announcement is nothing short of astounding. If the amount of interest that the hacker community has in this phone is paralleled by the general public, it looks like Motorola and AT&T might have a winner on their hands.
[via Engadget, xda-developers]
Thus far, Android has been been primarily rolled out on smartphones and tablets. NEC bucked the trend by debuting a netbook in Japan that runs the OS, called LifeTouch Note. While NEC didn’t offer a release date, it announced the price: ¥45,000 ($540 USD).
LifeTouch Note has a keyboard, seven inch touchscreen, 2MP Webcam, Wi-Fi, GPS, SD, SDHC slots, can support up to 8GB memory, Nvidia Tegra 2 GPU, and Android 2.2 (Froyo). Not bad for a netbook, but those specs come at with a premium price tag.
Via Engadget
Apple exerts famously tight-fisted control over what apps make it into its iTunes App Store. Now, one Android app developer has learned, Google can play that game, too.
Kongregate, a popular website featuring Adobe Flash-based games, had an app in the official Android Market for less than 24 hours before Google pulled it down.
Google removed the Kongregate Arcade app on Wednesday afternoon, citing a violation of the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement.
Although Google didn’t elaborate, it’s likely that Kongregate violates section 4.5 of the Developer Distribution Agreement. That’s a non-compete clause which states developers “may not use the Market to distribute or make available any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of Products outside of the Market.”
The Kongregate app hosts Flash games created by thousands of outside developers. In other words, the app is in effect routing around the Android Market’s approval process, setting up its own distribution system for Flash-based software.
“It does seem like a pretty extreme distortion to call something that plays content in a browser to be the same thing as an application store,” Kongregate CEO Jim Greer said in a statement given to multiple news outlets. “By this definition, we don’t see why apps like the Kindle or other music apps aren’t across the line.”
Google’s policy is reminiscent of Apple’s infamous no-Flash policy on iOS devices. Apple has stated publicly that it disallows Flash due to the platform’s proprietary nature, security issues and performance-related problems. But there’s another, unstated reason why Apple doesn’t want Flash: It’s too dangerous for a company that wants to maintain control of its products and software to let a platform like Flash become accessible to the iOS. If Flash developers were to do what Kongregate did with the Android Marketplace — code games in Flash and load them to a web page, which the Marketplace app redirects users to — Apple would lose control of the iOS platform. That could introduce security risks but would also cut into Apple’s revenue, as it would provide developers with a way to distribute software while avoiding paying the percentage that Apple takes on app sales.
Google, however, is being more straightforward with their approach. Rather than unleashing a torrent of words on us like Steve Jobs did with his no-Flash explanation, the DDA clause boils down to two hyphenated words: “Non-compete.” Don’t release apps that have the potential to take customers outside of the Android Marketplace economy.
Pointing at others who may or may not be breaking the rules, however, probably won’t help Kongregate much in this case. But the company hasn’t completely given up hope for reconciling their differences with Google.
“While Google has pulled [the app] down temporarily,” Greer told Wired.com in an email statement, “we will work with them to make the app available in their Market.”
It’s not as if Kongregate is completely exiled from all Android OS-running handsets, either. It took me only a few minutes to sideload the Kongregate Arcade app onto my smartphone by accessing Kongregate’s web site directly through my phone’s browser, although to do so I had to deactivate the safety option prohibiting users from downloading apps from unofficial Android app stores. And there’s always the option of putting the app up on alternative, unofficial Android app markets.
But being banned from the most popular market for Android apps is obviously undesirable for Kongregate. At least the company has a pretty good idea of why Google is objecting to its app.
Photo: Kongregate app/Gamestop.com
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We’ve seen plenty of data to show that Android is the hottest-selling smartphone OS among US buyers today, but now we have a stat point to show that it’s doing pretty well in cumulative terms as well. According to ComScore’s latest estimates, Android had 26 percent of all US smartphone subscribers in the quarter ending November 2010, bettering Apple’s iPhone for the first time. The major victim of Android’s ascendancy has actually been RIM’s BlackBerry, whose lead at the top contracted by 4.1 percentage points (nearly 11 percent less than the share it had in the previous quarter). Guess those Verizon iPhones and dual-core BBs had better start arriving pretty soon.
ComScore: Android jumps ahead of iOS in total US smartphone subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The original Google phone got us all excited a couple of weeks back when an OTA update was presumed to be the oven-hot Gingerbread upgrade, only to disappoint us. Now we’ve got the most lucid statement from the Android chefs yet on when the real Gingerbread Nexus One will stand up, which is placed in the relatively ill-defined window of “the coming weeks.” Hey, better weeks than months, right?
Nexus One will get Gingerbread OTA update ‘in the coming weeks’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Android 2.3, get your Android 2.3! A Gingerbread ROM for the Droid Incredible that’s been cooking on xda-developers for a couple of weeks is finally looking ready for mass consumption. It hit version 4 overnight, fixing a few niggling issues and enabling the 8 megapixel camera, which leaves only its video recording and GPS functions on the to-do list. Otherwise, it’s looking like a very slick implementation of Google’s latest OS, and it’s particularly pleasing to see how its responsiveness has improved between builds. Hit the source link for more info, though don’t expect to find out why HTC, Verizon et al can’t do things this quickly themselves.
[Thanks, Stuart]
Continue reading Droid Incredible takes a stable bite out of Gingerbread (video)
Droid Incredible takes a stable bite out of Gingerbread (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 02:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Hold on to your hats, people, there’s a wind of awesomeness coming through. The Nexus S is no longer the only Gingerbread game in town, courtesy of supercurio over on the xda-developers forum, who has ported the hot new phone’s Android 2.3 install over to its Samsung forefather, the Galaxy S. The port is described as being unmodified from the Nexus S original, although quite a few basic functions like voice, WiFi, and GPS (insert joke about Galaxy S GPS woes) aren’t yet operational. All the same, we agree with supercurio that it’s looking “super smooth” and look forward to seeing him and the rest of the xda crew polish this stock Android baby off in short order.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S receives Gingerbread port right from the Nexus S source (video)
Samsung Galaxy S receives Gingerbread port right from the Nexus S source (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
You know what they say about a trip to the FCC‘s database, right? Why, it’s much like the step just prior to achieving manhood — one more leap from here, and you’ll be ripe for the pickin’. Just a few months after Hannspree teased us with a formal introduction of its (then unnamed) 10.1-inch multitouch Froyo tablet, it looks as if that very device has now found a moniker. The 1.6-pound HSG1164 will eventually bring a fairly impressive build of materials to light, offering a 1GHz Tegra 2 chip, 16GB of internal storage, 512MB of NAND Flash, a microSD slot, Android 2.2, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, mini USB / HDMI connector, an inbuilt light sensor, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and a Li-ion battery of unspecified size. There’s obviously no direct mention of a ship date in the documentation here, but we’re putting our money on an early 2011 release. Care to wager, too?
Hannspree’s HSG1164 10.1-inch Froyo tablet drops by the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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