Hasta La Gadget!

Google’s Android Market now has a web client. Finally! And guess what else, it’s already live. Hit the source link below to get exploring. It’s very simple, really, you can browse the entire Market catalog on your desktop or however else you’re accessing the web, you can purchase anything that takes your fancy, and then — via the magic of over-the-air transfers — it downloads and installs onto your Android handset. A neat My Market Account section will let you nickname your registered devices to make them more recognizable as well.

Google has also just announced that Android will soon support in-app purchases. Widespread developer interest has been cited as the major reason for doing it, so you’ve got those lovable coders to thank for the oncoming wave of micropayments you’ll have to deal with in your Android apps. The in-app purchasing SDK is releasing to devs today and will be “live to users prior to the end of this quarter.”

Update: Invalid request. Yep, that’s the message we keep getting when we try and download an app. Google promises that it should be working soon…

Update 2: And now it appears to be working!

Android Market gets a web store with OTA installations, in-app purchases coming soon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  market.android.com  | Email this | Comments

Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-only magazine The Daily, once described as “The New York Post Goes to College,” is now a go. Launched at a New York event this morning, it pledges to offer “the best of traditional journalism” with “the best of contemporary technology” like 360 degree photos and, naturally, lots of fancy multimedia content that is all pushed directly to the iPad every day. It’s priced at $.99 per week or $39.99 annually and launches today, unsurprisingly with Egypt taking the “cover” image. The team behind the new-age zine showed off plenty of that technology, including a magazine-like reading interface, letting you flip through pages, and a “carousel,” that gives you a higher-level view of the pages for easier browsing.

The Daily also includes audio versions, with professional voiceover so you won’t have to worry about GPS voice, plus video overviews of all the content if you just don’t have time for reading or listening. You can share stuff you like on Twitter or Facebook and others will be able to read those stories for free via the web — but not all the content, naturally. The site will offer app reviews and features with links right to the App Store. Sports fans get full schedules and news updates for the teams they like. Again, The Daily launches today, and we’re told that the first two weeks will be courtesy of Verizon. Good on ya, VZW!

Update: It’s now available in the App Store.

Continue reading The Daily iPad ‘newspaper’ launches, $.99 weekly or $39.99 per year

The Daily iPad ‘newspaper’ launches, $.99 weekly or $39.99 per year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Thought Honeycomb was just for tablets? Well, it’s not! Sure, tablets might be Google’s main thrust with the release, but we’ve been able to dig up enough evidence in the preview SDK’s emulator released yesterday to suggest that these guys are still keeping their eyes on the smartphone prize.

Here’s how it works: the emulator can be set to load at an arbitrary screen resolution. By default, that’s WXGA, 1280 x 768 — perfect for tablets, but obviously a wee bit large for even the biggest smartphones. Well, it turns out that setting the emulator to WVGA (like you might find on a modern mid- to high-end smartphone) triggers a moderately different shell UI that lacks most of the whiz-bang home screen stuff Google’s shown on the Honeycomb tablets. In fact, the default launcher crashes out entirely, which means you need to install a replacement (Launcher Pro works nicely) just to play around.

Once you get in, it’s pretty raw, but you immediately notice that the emulator’s got some traces of smartphone support. Notably, the status bar reverts to a more smartphone-friendly form, albeit one with pre-Gingerbread background coloration and incorrectly-inverted font colors. The lock screen (pictured above) is back to its old form, not the webOS-esque circular lock in the Honeycomb tablet UI. The browser — which has been completely revamped in Honeycomb — works, though without visible tabs; Google might be thinking that they’d take up too much real estate on a screen this small.

Again, you can’t glean much here, but it’s interesting primarily because the emulator knows to revert to a smartphone UI layout at the lower resolution — a possible sign that Honeycomb will be a true dual-mode, dual-purpose platform from day one. And even if it isn’t, it looks like they’re setting themselves up for a two-UI strategy down the road.

[Thanks, Andrew]

Android 3.0 Honeycomb emulator has traces of smartphone support originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Stephen Elop’s first quarterly results as Nokia CEO have just come out, and while the company’s still growing, others seem to be speeding ahead of it. Nokia’s reporting its converged mobile devices (smartphones, to you and us) reached volumes of 28.3 million during Q4 2010, which is a neat bump from 20.8 million at the same time last year and 26.5 million in the previous quarter. However, in the context of the broader smartphone marketplace, that figure now amounts to only a 31 percent share, according to Nokia’s own estimates, which is a major dip relative to its 40 percent slice in Q4 2009 and 38 percent in Q3 2010. Elop’s perspective on the matter is as follows:

“In Q4 we delivered solid performance across all three of our businesses, and generated outstanding cash flow. Additionally, growth trends in the mobile devices market continue to be encouraging. Yet, Nokia faces some significant challenges in our competitiveness and our execution. In short, the industry changed, and now it’s time for Nokia to change faster.”

When your operating profit goes from €1.47b (€950m net) a year ago to €1.09b (€745m net) this year, the response should indeed be to change and to change fast. Nokia’s still not disclosing sales figures of the N8, but given that this was the first full reporting period where the company’s Symbian flagship has been on sale, it doesn’t seem to have had quite the impact Espoo will have hoped for. Wanna try again with the N9?

Update: Nokia’s investor relations call has borne a few more interesting tidbits from the new man in charge. Elop is quoted as saying Nokia must “build or join a competitive ecosystem,” with the latter verb in that sentence sure to renew discussions of why the Finnish company should / shouldn’t switch to an OS such as Android or Windows Phone 7. We still think that’ll be the very last resort over in Espoo, but Elop apparently thinks Nokia has the brand recognition and operator relationships to make such a move if it wanted to. Which of course it doesn’t. Or does it? Let’s wait for Nokia’s Strategy and Financial Briefing in London on February 11th — Mr. Elop’s expected to be a lot more specific about his company’s roadmap going forward on that day.

Nokia smartphone market share shrinks to 31 percent, operating profit takes a beating too originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nokia  | Email this | Comments

You know that crazy next-gen PSP with multiple touchpads, dual analog sticks, and quadrupled resolution that Sony just trotted out? Yeah, it’s got a quad-core Cortex-A9 and a quad-core Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU doing the grunt work within. We’ve never seen a handheld this powerful. Then again, considering the darn thing won’t be launching until this holiday season, maybe quad-core parts will be the least Sony will need in order to match up to the “super phones” coming up this year. We’re just wondering how long any of these souped-up portables will last on a charge. Full spec sheet after the break.

Continue reading Sony’s next-gen PSP has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, quad-core GPU as well

Sony’s next-gen PSP has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, quad-core GPU as well originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sony  | Email this | Comments