Hasta La Gadget!

According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China is too dependent on Google and its mobile OS Android. The ministry released a white paper yesterday to voice its concerns. To support its argument, statistics say that Android was on 90% of all smartphones in China Q3 2012, and was on 70.1% of all its smartphones in Q4 2012. iOS only accounted for 21% of China’s market share in Q4.

The white paper stated, “Our country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android.” The paper went on to say that Google was discriminating against varoius Chinese companies, including the Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc., and Huawei Technologies, because it would restrict core technologies and its technology road maps from them. This would make it increasingly difficult for those companies to build on top of Android.

While the ministry did not state what regulations, or policies they would implement to deal with their dependency on Android, it’s expected to go in place sometime in the near future. China is also expected to be pushing out its own alternative to Android, Baidu. It believes that Baidu would help lessen its dependency on Android, however the ministry still has not stated whether or not pushing Baidu is the direction it will go in.

If China does start pushing another operating system, even if it’s not Baidu, this will be an issue for Google’s Android market share. The IDC states that nearly 300 million smartphones will ship in China alone, and China is expected to have the fastest growing adaption of smartphones for the next 4 years. 2/3 of all shipped smartphones in China are expected to be Android-based devices.

[via Reuters]

China is apparently TOO dependent on Android is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Facebook developers had faced many challenges when developing their app for older platforms like Android 2.2 Froyo and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. When Facebook completely revamped its app last year to provide a better user experience, they discovered that the app did not play well with older Android devices. They discovered that the problem had to do with a program called “dexopt” which determines a fixed-size buffer called “LinearAlloc” of apps installed on a specific device. While the buffer size is 8 or 16 MB in size for newer Android versions like Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, its only 5 MB in the older versions.

The group was able to come up with a solution by injecting secondary dex files directly into the Android class loader, but then another problem appeared. It turns out that the Facebook app would crash immediately after startup because it had surpassed the method limit set by Android’s virtual machine, Dalvik. The team was at a stand-still, unsure what they could do to fix the problem. They thought that they would have to cut out various features in their Facebook 2.0 app, or just restrict the revamped app to devices with newer versions of Android.

The developers thought “if we could only increase that buffer from 5 MB to 8 MB, we would be safe!”. They realized that they needed to find the LinearAllocHdr object, “lock it, and replace the buffer.” They then had an idea of using a JNI extension to replace the existing buffer with a bigger one. They found the proper value in the vmList using the JavaVM pointer in JNI, they scanned the DvmGlobals object to find the match, found the LinearAlloc header and replaced the buffer. They were able to build the JNI extension and implement it into the Facebook app.

They ran into a small issue with the Samsung Galaxy S II, which they dubbed as “the most popular Gingerbread phone of all time”. The buffer size was 4 bytes off, so they had to safely scan the process heap to search for the correct buffer. After they found the fix, they created a test app, and with the help of manual testing, DeviceAnywhere, and a Google test lab, they were able to test their new Facebook app on 70 different Android devices. To their relief, the app successfully worked on each device.

The team thanks Google and Android for being an open source platform. If the platform wasn’t open, they wouldn’t have been able to “ship our best version of the app”. Facebook also has its extensive training program to thank for that. The program, which was started last year, helped many Facebook staff members discover the reasoning behind the Gingerbread/Facebook debacle.

[via Facebook]

How Facebook fixed its Gingerbread Dalvik problem is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like the White House has heard the voices of the 114,000+ people who believe that unlocking their cell phone should be a legal process. It too believes that banning people from unlocking their cell phones isn’t fair, especially since people paid good money for those devices. Not only that, but the White House wants to also legalize the unlocking of tablet devices as well, since tablets fall under the same category as cell phones.

Now that the White House has agreed that cell phone unlocking should be legal, they have to work on a variety of different ways to remedy the problem. R. David Edelman, the White House’s Senior Adviser for internet, innovation, and privacy, wrote that the Obama Administration is working on legislative fixes that will make it clear that, “neither criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation.”

Edelman also wrote that the FCC and the mobile service providers will have huge roles to play in terms of legalizing cell phone unlocking. The FCC released a statement saying, “From a communications policy perspective, this raises serious competition and innovation concerns, and for wireless consumers, it doesn’t pass the common sense test.” The FCC will further analyze the situation to see whether or not consumers should be able to unlock their phones. It also encourages Congress to think up some solutions to the problem.

Consumers should be very happy now that the White House is siding with them, especially since the ban on cell phone unlocking caused a lot of outrage in the wireless community. By sticking out their contracts, or by buying their phones off contract, they should be able to do whatever they want with their device. T-Mobile should also be happy about the White House’s decision, seeing as it’s been gunning for AT&T customers to convert over to its service with their unlocked mobile devices.

We’ll keep you posted on any updates regarding this issue. Edelman wrote that the White House will continue to work to “ensure our laws keep pace with changing technology, protect the economic competitiveness that has led to such innovation in this space, and offer consumers the flexibility and freedoms they deserve.”

[via White House]

White House combats ban on cell phone unlocking is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like 2013 is the year when smartphones finally outsell feature phones. It’s been a long time coming, and the shipments of smartphones are finally expected to beat that of feature phones by 0.2%. The IDC (International Data Corporation) states that shipments of smartphones in 2013 is forecasted to equal 50.1% of all mobile phone shipments globally. The reason being that emerging markets are finally adapting more to the smartphone craze.

The IDC expects all smartphone vendors to ship a total of 918.6 million smartphones this year globally. The increased number of smartphone sales is due to countries like China, India, and Brazil shifting their focus from feature phones to smartphones. China’s smartphone adaptation has been growing at a rapid pace these past couple of years, and it’s expected to continue that momentum throughout 2013. Emerging markets like India and Brazil, where many people still stick to feature phones, are expected to have a rapid transition from feature phones to smartphones from 2013-2017.

Melissa Chau, a Senior Research Manager at IDC in Asia/Pacific, stated, “Even as China starts to mature, there remains enormous untapped potential in other emerging markets like India, where we expect less than half of all phones shipped there to be smartphones by 2017, and yet it will weigh in as the world’s third largest market.” Low cost smartphones, and the advancement of 4G technology are speculated to be the reasons behind this growth in smartphone shipments.

In 2013, China will be the largest smartphone market, with 301.2 million smartphones to be shipped throughout the country. Following China is the United States with 137.5 million smartphone shipments. The United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, and India will be following very far behind with 35.5, 35.2, 28.9, and 27.8 million smartphone shipments consecutively. With many affordable smartphone options, like the smartphones offered by Huawei, it looks like feature phones may finally be seeing their end.

[via IDC]

IDC: smartphones WILL outsell feature phones this year is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

LG Electronics has announced that it has just reached another milestone by selling over 10 million of its LTE smartphones. This comes about 6 months after the company reached its first milestone of 5 million LTE smartphones sold. LG says that by including 4G LTE technology in its handsets, they are appealing to the growing needs of consumers who want devices capable of the fastest network speeds.

After reaching this milestone, LG is already gearing up for its next milestone. The company wants to double its LTE smartphones market share in 2013, and it expects to triple the sales of its LTE handsets this year. LG Mobile’s president and CEO, Jong-seok Park, stated, “Having established ourselves as a major industry player, we will continue to expand our footprint in the global LTE market with a wider range of differentiated, high quality LTE smartphones.”

LG attributes its success to a variety of factors, including launching its LTE devices globally, its early entry into the LTE markets, and its rollout of the LG Optimus G handsets. LG also stated that according to Strategy Analytics, global shipments of LTE handsets will reach 275 million, and LG hopes that it will be a major player in that figure. Alongside LG, Strategy Analytics attributes the upcoming boom of LTE handsets to Apple and Samsung as well.

LG doubling its sales of its LTE handsets this year doesn’t seem too far off. LG plans on releasing the LG Optimus G Pro sometime in Q2, and it has announced its LG Optimus F-series, which is a series of handsets capable of 4G LTE, but at a more affordable price point. All of these phones were announced at the Mobile World Congress this past week and are set to appeal to all types of consumers, from those seeking lower-end handsets to those seeking only the best handsets available.

[via LG]

LG sells 10 million LTE smartphones worldwide is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.