google android
Latest
The extended Nexus family: Google's golden Android standard
Google's Nexus line has long stood as the company's ideal vision of its widely adopted, open-source Android operating system. The devices, be they smartphones, tablets or even one-off media streamers, are built in conjunction with select hardware partners and represent an ideal marriage of tech specs with an unadulterated version of Android. It's Google's way of dealing with fragmentation (read: skinned versions) in the mobile OS market it created; a reference mark for manufacturers to aspire to, so to speak. On the tail of the original Android handset's sixth anniversary and in the run-up to whatever new Nexuses come next, we take a look back at the hardware path that's been Google's gold standard for Android.
When Google engineers first learned about the iPhone: 'What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties'
The iPhone turned the tech world on its head and ushered in the modern era of the smartphone. In unveiling the iPhone, Apple not only captured the attention of the masses, but also delivered a huge kick in the arse to competitors who quickly realized that their current product roadmaps were instantly outdated. Steve Jobs famously called Android a stolen product (in addition to promising to go thermonuclear on them), a point to which Android enthusiasts like to point out that Google actually acquired the Andy Rubin-led Android team in August 2005. Still, the type of product Android embodied drastically shifted once Jobs graced the stage at Macworld 2007 and revealed the iPhone for the very first time. In his new book, Dogfight: How Apple and Google went to War and Started a Revolution, Fred Vogelstein captures the reaction that many of the early Android engineers had upon learning of the iPhone. In short, many were shocked and soon came to the realization that the version of Android they had been working on for so many months would have to be scrapped. An iPhone-type experience was the future, and it was clear to many involved that they would have to follow suit. Vogelstein relays a quote from Google engineer Chris DeSalvo, who said, "As a consumer, I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought, 'We're going to have to start over.'" For most of Silicon Valley-including most of Google-the iPhone's unveiling on January 9, 2007 was something to celebrate. Jobs had once again done the impossible. Four years before he'd talked an intransigent music industry into letting him put their catalog on iTunes for ninety-nine cents a song. Now he had convinced a wireless carrier to let him build a revolutionary smartphone. But for the Google Android team, the iPhone was a kick in the stomach. "What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties," DeSalvo said. "It's just one of those things that are obvious when you see it." The significance of Jobs' iPhone announcement wasn't lost on Android chief and former Apple engineer Rubin. Vogelstein writes that Rubin at the time was in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. Indeed, many at the time expressed astonishment that a lone company like Apple could completely upstage an event as storied and grandiose as CES. In any event, upon watching the Apple keynote, Rubin knew that his Android team had to re-evaluate its strategy. That's not to say that the Android models that Rubin and his team were working on were complete crap, but those devices lacked many of the features that made the iPhone so distinct and revolutionary. For instance, the Android models being developed at Google all sported traditional QWERTY keyboards, a feature Jobs lambasted during his keynote. Now to be fair, the iPhone didn't catch just the Android folks off-guard; it caught everyone off-guard. If you go back and look at many of the early iPhone rumors that circulated before January 2007, even the most ambitious predictions and outlandish mockups absolutely paled in comparison to what Apple actually had in store. Further, other companies were just as astonished by Jobs' iPhone introduction. A former RIM employee, for instance, recounted how many folks inside RIM were in disbelief following the iPhone introduction. All these companies were fighting over what amounts to overgrown PDAs with phones and wireless stacks strapped on. Everyone assumed power density was no where even close to what was needed for general computing, that a full featured browser and heavy duty Internet services were impossible due to bandwidth and latency. Take a look at how our Java expert groups named standards, how people at the time talked about what features smart phones should have, and it's clear that no one thought an iPhone was possible. Even Danger, which eventually [led to] Windows Phone 7 and Android, was just working on a better Blackberry. I left RIM back in 2006 just months before the iPhone launched and I remember talking to friends from RIM and Microsoft about what their teams thought about it at the time. Everyone was utterly shocked. RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all-hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: It couldn't do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor; it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant. The folks working on Android, to their credit, were able to reverse course and steer Android in an iPhone-like direction. RIM, on the other hand, remained beholden to their QWERTY keyboards for far too long and we all saw how well that worked out for them.
Thoughts on the Google Nexus 7 from the perspective of a longtime iOS user [updated]
I bought my first iPhone in 2008 and my first iPad in 2010, and I've upgraded both devices several times since then. Over the last five years, iOS has easily been my second-most used operating system by hours of usage after Windows (which I have to use for my day job as a Java developer). I've never seriously looked at any alternative mobile OS, as I have a substantial commitment to Apple's ecosystem in terms of app purchases, content storage, and sheer muscle memory. So it was something of a plot twist for me when I recently landed a job offer from Google London, working on one of Android teams. As I don't have a great deal of hands-on time with Android, I was nervous that I didn't have a very deep idea -- or even a fairly shallow one -- of what's what on the other major mobile OS. The Google recruiter assured me I wasn't expected to have prior knowledge, but even so, if I rocked up on my first day next year not knowing anything, I'd feel like a complete chump. I figured that I should pick up an Android device and get my feet wet. Having made that decision, and already owning an iPhone 5 and an iPad 3 that I was happy with -- and not wanting to spend any more money than I had to -- the logical decision was clear: a Nexus 7, Google's flagship small tablet device. It's relatively cheap, at $229/£199 for a 16 GB device (compared to $399/£319 for the forthcoming iPad mini with Retina display). In addition to being an Android testbed it also fills a role that I don't currently have matched up with a device: a small, semi-pocketable, one-handable tablet. My life will soon contain a fair bit of commuting via busy London public transport, so I thought a device that needed less elbow room to use than my 9.7" iPad might be a good idea. During my first few days with the device, I kept some detailed notes on what I saw that I liked, as well as what I didn't. I present these notes now for your consideration. I'm not going to pretend that this is any sort of a review; I don't use enough different tablets to be a capable judge. It's just my personal take after a few days of intensive use, from the perspective of a long-term iOS loyalist. Screen and form factor In any tablet, which generally consists of little more than a screen plus a thin bezel, these two subjects are intrinsically linked. Unlike many Apple-centric writers, I've long been intrigued by the 7" tablet size. I picked up a first-generation Kindle Fire from the US for a friend in 2011, long before the release of the iPad mini that legitimized the small tablet form factor for many people. Although the Fire was in many ways a deeply iffy device, my first impression on using it for an hour or so was that a tablet light enough to be comfortably held in one hand is a qualitatively different device to one that cannot. Subsequently, using my wife's iPad mini and now this Nexus device has further cemented this belief. Firstly, in terms of display quality, the Nexus 7 is top notch. Anandtech reports it has terrific color calibration, it's pin-sharp with a better-than-Retina-display dots-per-inch, it's simply lovely all around -- the equal, to my eyes, of any of my iOS devices. One minor gripe though: even at the lowest setting, it's too bright to read at night without illuminating the entire room. The Nexus isn't going to displace my Kindle Paperwhite for that. And of course, the Kindle enjoys battery life that any LCD-packing device could only dream of. So display quality is very similar. In contrast to Apple's offerings, however, the Nexus 7 adopts a very different aspect ratio. The iPads, both mini and traditional, have a 4:3 ratio, so the overall tablet is squarish. To my mind this is an aesthetically pleasing ratio; balanced, if you will. Neither too tall nor too short. There's a reason that 4:3 is a common proportion in photography stretching back over many decades; it's just nice to look at. The Nexus 7, however, has a 16:10 screen; relative to an iPad the screen is narrower but much taller -- like the iPhone 5. This brings some significant advantages. It makes the device itself narrower, which I found made it easier to carry -- the Nexus 7 will fit in the inside pocket of most of my jackets and the back pocket of my jeans, whereas the iPad mini does not. It also means I can more comfortably "span" the device with one hand, with my left thumb curled around the left edge and my fingers curled around the right edge. I find this a bit of a stretch on the mini (I have smallish hands, though). The reduced screen width is also a good fit for some reading tasks. Apps that reflow text to fit the screen (such as Kindle or Pocket), using a font size I find comfortable, and with narrow margins, end up adhering pleasingly close to the typographical rule of thumb that 66 characters per line gives optimum readability. On the iPad mini, I'd need wider margins or a larger font to achieve that. And of course the screen is a natural fit for 16:9 video content. The Nexus 7's screen is 16:10, so widescreen video has just a very small top and bottom letterbox. It's 178 mm across the diagonal, which means it's 151 mm along the long edge and 94 mm on the short edge. With the letterboxing applied, a 16:9 video will therefore be 151 mm x 85 mm in size. By contrast, on an iPad mini with its more expansive 4:3 screeen with a 201 mm diagonal, widescreen video content will be 161 x 91 mm -- barely larger because of the letterboxing. It's not a big deal, but now I've done all the math to prove it's not a big deal I'm damned well going to include these results! However, it's not all sunshine and roses in widescreen land. I found many web pages to feel somewhat cramped. In portrait mode, the text of a typical desktop-layout web page is often a little small until you zoom to just the content column, but now you've sacrificed visibility of the navigation tools and any other horizontal content. An iPad mini would be able to show the whole width of the page without bother. Perhaps tellingly, Google's Chrome browser defaulted with the option to "request desktop sites" set to false, thus preferring mobile sites. Some mobile sites, however, looked a little odd to me on the 7" screen -- sparse, somehow, as they are blown up into an amount of space they were not designed for. Then there's landscape mode, which exacerbates these problems; I feel like I'm peering at the world through a letter box, condemned to scroll every few seconds as I reach the bottom of the screen again and again. The keyboard occupies over half the screen, leaving only six to eight lines of text visible in even a smallish font -- hopeless for text editing. Fortunately the Nexus, like the iPad mini, is narrow enough to make thumb typing in portrait mode quite practical. I wrote most of this article that way and found it reasonably agreeable, although I wouldn't want to write a novel on it. It's no substitute for my iPad paired with my trusty Logitech Ultrathin keyboard cover. A tale of two app stores Much has been written about the relative sizes and quality of Google's and Apple's competing app stores. Perhaps too much emphasis is placed on this, in fact. Consider Apple's recent boasts that is has paid $13 billion to iOS developers across the lifetime of the platform, and that lifetime sales of iOS devices now stand at 700 million. Big numbers, to be sure. But divide one by the other and you calculate that the total amount spent on apps across the lifetime of the average iOS device is just $26.52 -- so perhaps 15 or 20 paid apps purchased, in total. I do wonder if the typical person simply doesn't care about apps as much as we power users do (or, perhaps, that they gravitate toward only free or freemium apps). I must also note that anyone's experience of an app store is going to be highly personal. For example, I have it on good authority that music production tools (of which GarageBand is merely the most visible tip of the iceberg) flourish on the Apple App Store, whereas the Play store has little to compete. I don't make music beyond some therapeutic drum playing occasionally, so I cannot comment on that with authority. Likewise, there are many other categories of app, and doing a detailed comparison across the hundreds of thousands of apps across the two stores is impossible. But I will add a few notes on how I fared with the apps I care about, most of which are (I think) pretty mainstream. I was pleased to find that most such apps are on Android, even less famous ones like OurGroceries (an outstanding cloud synced shopping list app, by the way) and Paprika (my favourite recipes app). Flipboard synced my subscriptions over from iOS. Common services like Flickr, Foursquare, Simplenote, Pocket, Tumblr, Yelp, iPlayer, BBC News, the remote control for my Sky DVR, and more were all present and correct. The financial impact wasn't very large, either: I'll have to spend about £10-15 or so ($15-20) to replace all my must-have premium apps. It wasn't all great, though. The most glaring casualties, however, were the very top tier of iOS apps: I've tried a few but found no Twitter client that's even in the same league as Tweetbot. (To be completely fair, I must acknowledge that my love for Tweetbot is so great that it has come to mold how I use Twitter, and no other client on any platform can compete with it for my affections either.) The field of Dropbox-powered Markdown-supporting text editors, whilst not completely barren, is much reduced on Android; I can't find anything to challenge Editorial or Writing Kit. Although niche, these are tools I rely on for writing on my iPad. Alternative calendar apps also seem to be thinner on the ground than on iOS; I can't find anything to challenge Calendars+, Calvetica, or my personal favourite, Fantastical. There seems to be rather fewer interesting games on Android, although the big names like Where's My Water, Candy Crush Saga, and Angry Birds are of course all there. This strikes me as a shame as the Nexus 7 would probably be a better gaming device than either my iPad 3 (too heavy) or my iPhone 5 (too small a screen). Several bigger games I would have liked to have tried on it were missing, like XCOM, Civilization Revolution, and Baldur's Gate (although the latter is "coming soon"). On the other hand, the Play store has emulators in it for various consoles, which opens up the intriguing idea that I could play Advance Wars DS on my tablet. I intend to investigate this at some point. The idea of playing action games intended for physical controls on a tablet via touch screen controls doesn't thrill me (and using a PS3 controller with the Nexus, whilst possible, seems fantastically clunky) but more sedate games should survive the transfer relatively unharmed, I think. Related to the topic of app store size is also media store size: music, TV shows, books, films. I don't watch a lot of video on my tablet so I'm not best placed to draw conclusions from the brief look I did have at. However, anecdotally, I've heard many people say that Google's Play media store is rather smaller than Apple's, particularly outside the US where the tangled web of international video distribution rights makes it hard to get a good range of content. Of course if you mostly use independent services anyway -- Netflix, Kindle, and so forth -- then you'll find an equivalent experience on any platform; I find that a reason to prefer that sort of service, personally. Openness Much tedious squabbling has been done about the openness or otherwise of the Android operating system, and I do not intend to retread that tired ground here. However I must note that there are real, practical advantages to Android's willingness to allow users to customise aspects of the user experience that can make iOS feel a bit chafing and oppressive by comparison. Keyboards can be swapped out, a feature that has allowed experimental alternatives like Swype and Swiftkey to become established. Alternative browsers and mail clients and PDF viewers and photo galleries and so forth can be installed, as with iOS, but then can also be configured to be used as the default choice throughout the operating system. [Google's "shadow ecosystem" on iOS allows Chrome to launch Google Maps along with similar interactions among Google-branded apps, but does not change the wider experience. –Ed.] The home screen can be populated with a variety of information-rich widgets for at-a-glance access to whatever you care about most. I must admit I found this less compelling than I thought I would, but it's early days and I'm still experimenting with the large range of options available to me. I think I'll come to value this more as I find a mixture of widgets I'm happy with. The arrangement of app icons on the home screen, whilst snapped to a grid, does not need to be filled from the upper left corner first -- a small point, but I found this particularly liberating. The "sharing" feature works properly, which is to say it works like the Services menu in OS X. Once an app is installed, it appears throughout the operating system; so in Chrome, for example, I can send a URL directly to my Twitter client, or to Evernote, or to Pocket, or Tumblr, or any number of other apps I have installed. This is much more useful to me than the situation on iOS where only services Apple blesses (so just Twitter and Facebook) can get into the system-wide sharing options. There are further intriguing possibilities for customisation on the horizon, like the forthcoming app Cover. Cover adds to your touchscreen a strip of icons for the apps it thinks you're most likely to want right now, based on data culled from various sensors on your device, like location and travel speed. So if you're in work, you get options for your corporate mail and your calendar; if you're at home, you might see icons for Flipboard and Facebook; if you're driving, you might see Google Maps and Spotify. I think this trend of smartphones becoming better at predicting our needs by harnessing their rich trove of data about where we are and what we're doing is going to be important in the future. Apps with this anticipatory computing backbone are becoming more prevalent in both Google and Apple's ecosystems. Voice recognition Much the same as Apple, Google integrates voice recognition deeply into the operating system. Voice prompts can be found in various search boxes and in any text entry field via a dedicated button on the keyboard, very similar to iOS. You don't get many spoken responses back like Siri provides (or at least, I didn't -- there is a setting somewhere for a car mode so it must exist), which makes it seem rather characterless. You don't get Siri's jokes and Easter eggs either. But it can do many of the same tricks, like setting reminders and alarms, creating calendar entries, and so forth; getting information about sports scores or actors or movies works by shunting you to a Google search. More importantly, however, than the fine-grained features is how fast and accurate Google's voice transcription is. It's like night and day compared to Apple's offering. If you've never seen it, find someone with an Android phone and try it out -- then think about how much more often you'd reach for Siri if it was this good. Lightning port vs micro USB Apple's introduction of the Lightning port produced a lot of heat and noise across the blogosphere, mostly focussed on how expensive the charging cables were. Defenses of the standard usually hinged on the fact that it's a much more capable port than micro USB. However, via its micro USB port my Nexus 7 can: be charged quickly from the supplied 7 W charger (by comparison, the iPad mini comes with a 5 W charger and the iPad Air a 12 W one) be charged slowly from any USB port, over a generic cable I can buy for a few cents; spare Lightning cables cost $19 or $29 depending on length be connected to a USB card reader via a $1.38 adapter; the equivalent Apple adapter costs $29 be connected to a HDMI television via a $15 adapter; the Apple equivalent costs $49 Lightning has theoretical advantages, particularly in terms of future expansion, and the bidirectional plug is a pleasure to use. But I'm struggling to see meaningful practical advantages here. What I found in the Nexus was a tablet that can connect to everything I want it to connect to and save me a decent chunk of change into the bargain. Online services and lock-in My Google email, calendar and contacts list all work on iOS just fine. Yet my iCloud email, calendars and contact lists are inaccessible to Android. Hence, if I want to be free to access my data on all my devices, this asymmetry means I'm much better off with all my data in Google's hands than in Apple's. I wonder if, in the long term, that's a good thing for Apple; is it driving people who care about interoperability into the hands of competing providers? Certainly, I find myself giving serious thought to moving my primary calendar over from iCloud to Google now. [Update: numerous commenters below and elsewhere have pointed me to various Android apps that can bridge this gap, allowing you to access iCloud calendars and reminders on Android. SmoothSync seems to be the most common recommendation. Also, iCloud mail of course supports standard IMAP (which had entirely slipped my mind) so can be directly access through standard Android apps.] On the other hand, several times I wanted to reply to an iMessage, or tick off a completed task in Reminders, and I found myself reaching for the Nexus before realising that wasn't going to work and picking up my iPhone instead. My reminders list is shared with my wife, so I can't easily leave that behind. Many of my friends use iMessage, so when messaging with them I enjoy free texts (sometimes internationally), high quality images, and the ability to see when they have read a message and when they are typing a reply. (Plus sometimes iMessage even delivers all my messages promptly and in the correct order. Bonus!) All these Apple-only integrations create little patches of friction that stand in the way of me leaving iOS behind, and in aggregate they provide a powerful disincentive for me to try and run a mixed environment where some of my devices run iOS and some run Android. But another option I have is to entirely abandon iOS and embrace competitor devices and platforms wholesale. If it's easier for me to bypass this friction forever by dropping iOS than endure the hassle of mixing my devices across platforms... well, let's just say I'm not sure that's what Apple wanted to achieve. [Update: I neglected to add, photo syncing is a major pain point for me. I'm fully committed to Apple's infrastructure: Aperture for post-processing and storage, various albums synced to iPhone and all my photos synced to my iPad via iTunes, and Photo Stream for ad hoc sharing with friends. Integrating Android into that workflow in any meaningful way has so far defeated me. I had high hopes for an Everpix Android app, which would be perfect, but the company's sad demise has scuppered that option.] The "hardware" back button I say "hardware" because on the Nexus 7 it is actually a strip on the bottom of the touchscreen, albeit one that is almost omnipresent. Video playback apps and full screen photo viewing sometimes reduce it to a blurred-out dot, presumably to be less intrusive; apparently in the next release of Android they will be able to hide it entirely. I found the back button to be a mixed bag. About 80% of the time, it did exactly what I thought it would: took me out of a full-screen image viewer and into the app that opened it, say. Or if one app had just loaded another, it went back from the second app into the first; that was disconcerting at first but came to feel natural. But some apps were less consistent and I find myself agreeing with John Gruber's spot-on observation. In the Twitter app Carbon, for example, you swipe between three panes showing your timeline, @-replies, and private messages. Many times, I would move from one of those views to the other, then instinctively press the back button to move back to the previous view: but that would usually exit the app entirely instead. This was maddening, and I can't seem to reprogram my expectations so I'm still pressing that dratted back button! Now, you could argue that this was an isolated example of an app that implements this feature clumsily. Or, as Gruber posits, you could equally argue that this is an idea that's ripe to accidental misuse by devs and is simply never going to work right across every app in the Play Store. I'm not sure which side of that line I sit on yet. Miscellany A few extra small observations that didn't deserve a section of their own. The good: You can easily create a Google account without attaching a credit card -- something which requires arcane incantations on iOS. Free apps can also be downloaded without entering your Play password. Screenshots go into their own gallery -- far preferable to the iOS approach where they are mixed in with your photos. Apps can have free trials -- for example SwiftKey allowed me to install a feature complete version of the software that will work for a month. That's not allowed under Apple's App Store rules. All my full-size iPads have been Wifi-only models, and that's never bothered me. But the sheer portability of the Nexus 7 make it somehow jarring that I have the Wifi-only model of that. I expect I'd feel the same way about the iPad mini if I owned one myself rather than just borrowing one occasionally. A curious psychological effect: you know how the iPhone 5's larger screen makes the iPhone 4 feel cramped and constrained when you go back to it? The Nexus 7 made me feel that about my iPhone 5, like the screen was suddenly too small. What's curious is that my 9.7" iPad has never done this; I think it's because it feels like a totally different device (due to the weight, mostly) whereas the Nexus 7 and the iPhone 5 are somehow more similar. It makes a little bit more sense to me now why massive smartphones like the 5" Nexus 5 seem to be popular with my friends. The Nexus 7's stereo speakers are on the left and right of the device when it's held in landscape mode, whereas the iPad mini's are on the left and right of the device when it's held in portrait. I most care about getting stereo sound out of my tablet when I'm watching video, which means it's in landscape mode; I find Apple's decision here highly questionable. The Nexus doesn't sound bad, either, by the standards of tiny tinny tablet speakers. (Disclaimer: I'm a speaker snob. 5.1 floorstanders in my lounge and I disabled my TV's built-in speakers immediately after installing it.) [Update] Craig Grannell reminded me of something I liked but forgot to write about: on any web browser signed into your Google account, a single click of a button in the Google Play store can remote install an app to your Android device. That's something I wish Apple would copy. [Update] The notification center has a "remove all" button. C'mon Apple, throw me a bone. Bad stuff: Jerky/laggy/hesitant scrolling -- particularly bothersome in the Tumblr app, but I've seen it in lots of places, including official apps like Play. Pages with large graphics or embedded videos seem to be particularly grevious offenders. Somewhat baffling given the very high specs of the Nexus 7 (a quad core CPU and 2 GB RAM). I've heard some reports that the experimental ART runtime that can optionally replace Dalvik in KitKat can help with this. Android seems to have no equivalent to iOS's scroll-to-top tap-the-clock feature. I miss that dearly. Flinging a long list like a Twitter client again and again to get to the newest content is clunky. Some apps include it as a button or menu option, but not many. After I installed the BBC iPlayer app, I tried to watch something and was confronted by a dialog saying "to watch BBC programmes you need to install the BBC media player from the market place." I had to download this second app from the Play store before it would work. Could be something specific to the BBC, although I can't help but think that anything that clunky would never make it through Apple's app guidelines. Duplicated versions of apps -- for example, out of the box, I was confronted by "Photos" and "Gallery". I believe the former is an older, less powerful app that is part of the Android Open Source Project, whilst the latter is a closed-source official-Android-only more powerful app, but it's confusing to have the duplication and the difference isn't made explicit anywhere. [Update: Apparently I had this backward; Gallery is the older app, and "Photos" -- which was "G+ Photos" until recently -- is the newer. The general feeling seems to be that Photos will replace Gallery in time, as has happened with Chrome replacing the older Browser app.] The .com popup button on keyboard when entering URLs offers .net and a few other alternatives -- but it doesn't have .co.uk, despite my keyboard being set to "English (UK)." Apple gets this right. No AirPlay -- there's some sort of open standard equivalent, Miracast, but I don't have any compatible receivers to test it with. I don't use AirPlay a lot for TV watching but it does get a reasonable amount of use in our house for my wife and I to share content or shunt short YouTube clips and the like to our lounge TV. Of course, the Google Way would be to pick up a Chromecast for this use case. [Update: commenters below have pointed me to several options on the Play store for third-party apps that can stream to AirPlay receivers.] The camera's mediocre at best, but that doesn't bother me at all. I've taken no more than a dozen photos with my iPads in years of use. [Update] I miss my red badges on app icons. I think that, enabled sparingly on only those apps you care about, they are an elegant way to draw your attention to the stuff that matters most to you (whereas the iOS notification center is a cacophony of things I don't care about that I mostly ignore). I suspect that careful selection of homescreen widgets is a more Android-ish way of addressing this use case, so perhaps this feeling will pass. Stuff where I was tripped up because of my unfamilarity: It took me ages to find the rotation lock -- repeated Google searches returned conflicting information relating to different versions of Android and various other devices. Turns out the answer is to pull down from the upper right of the screen to access a quick settings panel (as opposed to the upper left, which is the notification centre.) The setting to turn off the odious key click sounds is found under "keyboards" and not "sounds", which confused me briefly. Swiping keyboards -- all my Android using friends are nuts about these swiping 'boards, and I gave Swiftkey a good go, but I can't seem to get on with it. I'm going to persevere as it's supposed to adapt to your writing style over time. I must admit to getting a rather queasy feeling when installing it, however, and clicking through a warning dialog that pointed out that third party keyboards could "see anything you type, including passwords and credit card numbers". Food for thought, for sure, and I daresay one of the reasons that Apple doesn't offer user-installable keyboards under iOS. Text selection semantics are different to iOS -- the way in which you position your cursor and select blocks of text is different. This has consistently driven me crazy when drafting this article. The bottom line The Nexus 7 is a really nice little bit of hardware. I'm very pleased with how portable it is and the quality of the screen. On the software side, there were some rough edges in adapting to Android -- some of them rooted in my own unfamiliarity rather than any outright badness, to be fair -- but overall this has definitely been a positive experience. If you find yourself torn between an iPad Air and an iPad mini with Retina display, if you really want both the big screen and the ultimate portability but both iPads is more than you want to spend -- well, you could do worse than consider an iPad Air with a Nexus 7 as a sidekick. It's working for me. [Update: One striking thing, as I have noted in some updates throughout the body of this article, is how many of my observations can be addressed through third-party apps that would be impossible on iOS. Background services that sync iCloud calendars to the Android calendar list, for example, or third party apps that install AirPlay services. This is, it seems to me, a key strength of the Android offering -- that third party apps have more control over the operating system, more flexibility to serve your needs. Of course with great power comes great responsibility; this very control leaves the door open to all manner of malware. I've certainly been wary of installing random apps from the store, rightly or wrongly, finding myself scrutinising the trustworthiness of an app in a way I never would on iOS. I am greatful to anyone who took the time to leave a comment and point me in the direction of apps that solve my problems. Many thanks to you all. --Rich]
Google bumps Android to 4.2, keeps Jelly Bean moniker
Well, it's no Key Lime Pie, but Android 4.2 is certainly a treat in its own right. The latest version of Google's mobile OS makes a number of evolutionary improvements to its already impressive repertoire -- including a new quick settings menu that can be accessed from the notification pull down and support for multiple user profiles. The multiple user support is especially handy for tablets like the new Nexus 10, which are much more likely to be shared, and now offer quick and easy user switching right from the lock screen. If you don't want to share your tablet, just what's on it, the new support for Miracast makes will allow you to wirelessly beam movies, games or anything else to a compatible display. The 10-inch tablet UI has also received a slight tweak, moving closer to the design for phones and the Nexus 7, with centered navigation buttons and the notification area up top. It might seem strange for users used to the Honeycomb-style tablet layout, but the new design is much simpler and provides a consistent experience across devices. Google has also overhauled the photo experience and added Photo Sphere -- a 360-degree panoramic shooting mode that captures everything around you. Obviously, you'll be able to post those shots to Google+, but you'll also be able to add them to Google Maps, basically creating your own personal Street View. Interestingly, Google has also taken a page from Swype's playbook, adding "Gesture Typing" to its keyboard. There's also a new screensaver called Daydream that offers up news, photos and other content when a device is docked or idle. Perhaps the biggest, and creepiest improvements are to Google Now, which can monitor your Gmail for relevant content such as flight numbers. Hotel and restaurant reservations are now presented as cards, as are packages enroute to your humble abode. The service will even remind you of events you've purchased tickets for, essentially making Calendar redundant for a lot of your personal life. For more info check out the source links.
Flipboard for Android gains audio, lets us tune into SoundCloud from our Samsung
Flipboard on iOS has had audio for some time, giving users the chance to go all high-brow as they listen to NPR while browsing the news on their iPad. It's Android's turn to adopt that cultured stance: an update to Flipboard on its newer platform includes the full, listen-in-the-background Audio category channel selection, whether it's thoughtful public radio snippets or spotlights on podcasts and artists. SoundCloud mavens get the biggest fill, both through a direct link to their account as well as a list of specialized channels. Anyone who can already use Flipboard for Android just needs to hit Google Play to add the new audio dimension; Kindle Fire and Nook owners should see a fully tailored experience in a matter of days.
SwiftKey Flow keyboard takes the fight to Swype with predictive gestures (video)
SwiftKey must be keen to finish its bout with Swype, as it just went for the knockout. It's launching SwiftKey Flow, an extension of its Android keyboard that blends SwiftKey's familiar word prediction with the hold-and-swipe gestures we most commonly associate with the company's arch-rival. Speed-minded typists now just have to glide across the virtual keys and let go as soon as Flow makes a correct guess. They don't have to pick a typing mode and stick with it, either, as both gestures and the usual taps will work at the same time. Prospective testers will want to sign up today for the SwiftKey Flow beta starting in the next few weeks. Everyone else, though, might want to watch from the bleachers -- the new parallels between SwiftKey and Swype just made this fight infinitely more entertaining.
Foursquare for Android updated for more social check-ins, shares club-hopping with the world
There's a good reason Foursquare has an Overshare badge. Still, that hasn't stopped the location service from rolling out an update to Android users that simplifies broadcasting your position to the world. The Android check-in screen now matches that of the iOS app with a more streamlined appearance that more quickly shares updates with Facebook and Twitter; mentioning friends is easier as well. As long as your social circle doesn't mind knowing that you checked into three different dance clubs in one night, Foursquare's update awaits at the source.
ITC rules that Samsung violates four Apple patents covering design, touch
The back and forth continues. US International Trade Commission Administrative Law Judge Thomas Pender has made an initial ruling that some Samsung's devices violate four Apple patents, including one iPhone design patent (the one you see above) and three software patents. Apple didn't manage a clean sweep, as Samsung was cleared of treading on two more patents, but the verdict still carries the all-too-familiar potential for a trade ban if the ITC maintains the findings in its final review. It's bleak news for the Korean company, which faced an initial loss to Apple at the ITC just last month -- even though large swaths of the mostly Android-based Galaxy phones and tablets in the dispute have long since left the market, an upheld verdict gives Samsung one less bargaining chip in a protracted legal war.
Alcatel One Touch Shockwave reaches US Cellular, takes your bumps and scrapes for $50
Those of us picking budget smartphones in the US seldom have the choice of a toughened smartphone, and it's even more of a challenge when we're not signed on to one of the top four carriers. US Cellular is offering the cost-conscious a (hardened) olive branch by shipping the Alcatel One Touch Shockwave. Skip past the creaky Android 2.3, 800MHz processor, 3.2-megapixel camera and 3.5-inch, 480 x 320 display -- a shock- and water-resistant shell as well as Dragontrail-based glass should keep the smartphone working through most forms of casual abuse. We also don't mind having preloaded Amazon Appstore and media apps, although the frugal 2GB microSD card in the box won't leave much room for any downloading. We'd at least keep the Shockwave on the short list when the $50 price and long-lasting design will leave ample funds for just about everything else.
Verizon's HTC DLX may be called Droid DNA, Windows Phone 8 devices get tentative prices
Verizon is one of the more common proponents of silly Android device names, in part through its insistence on that "Droid" prefix for some hardware. When its smartphone badges practically demand a pause for breath, you know there's a problem. Android Central's purported copy of a Minimum Advertised Pricing list could show that there's hope for the carrier yet. The chart shows the HTC DLX (6435LVW) skipping the rumored Droid Incredible X name in favor of Droid DNA -- and that's it. No superlatives, no arbitrary "4G LTE" tags to remind us of the network we already know we're using. The 5-inch phone might have even been a reasonable launch, as the MAP shows a $200 contract price that would potentially take effect just before Thanksgiving. Want more? Other smartphones are on the supposedly leaked MAP list as well, primarily focusing on Windows Phone 8 gear: the as yet unconfirmed Nokia Lumia 822 shows up with a $100 price and a mid-November release window, while Verizon's take on the Windows Phone 8X is present with a $200 price and similar timing. Those who'd rather go for a Samsung phablet than HTC's aren't left out, either. The Verizon edition of the Galaxy Note II is on the list with a $300 price and availability that starts immediately -- rather convenient, that.
Square launches in Canada, streamlines payments on the world stage
For all of Square's fast growth, it's been exclusively the domain of US shopkeeps; others had to scrounge for an alternative, if there was one at all. The payment pioneer clearly isn't content to isolate itself or anyone else, as it's making its international debut with support for Canada. Locals can immediately request the free Mobile Card Reader and swipe credit cards with an Android or iOS device at the same flat, 2.75 percent rate that more experimental American stores know very well. Complete equality isn't available to Canucks just yet, as Square Wallet won't be available until 2013, but the access remains a step forward for Canadian merchants that don't want to be tied down to a terminal any more than their southern neighbors.
Rara.com expands to iOS, Windows 8 and more countries
Rara.com has been mighty busy since its luddite-friendly music streaming service launched at the end of last year, and now it's reporting the outcome of those 10 months of toil. In addition to an improved web experience and new Android widget, an AirPlay-compatible app for iOS is now available, with software for Windows 8 arriving alongside its launch. Rara's 18 million tracks haven't only invaded other platforms, but other countries, too -- residents of Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Africa and Portugal have joined the party, bringing the total number of compatible countries to 27. Lenovo is also getting a piece of the action, as a worldwide agreement means Rara software will now come pre-installed on the manufacturer's Android tablets and Windows 8 gear. Want to hear more about Rara's recent accomplishments? Then head for the PR after the break.
LG Optimus G comes with locked bootloader, might not be cause for panic
We're fans of the LG Optimus G, although the custom ROM lovers among us might want to tamp down their expectations after this. We've confirmed comments to Android Central that the late 2012 flagship has a locked bootloader much like the Optimus 4X HD and Optimus Vu that went before it -- any serious experimentation with a typical carrier variant could at least require jumping through some hoops, if it's possible at all. It might not matter much for the sort who cares about bootloaders, though. If statements by other LG staffers are more than just wishful thinking, there could be a Nexus variant of the Optimus G next week that's as good as a blank slate for modders.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD update brings Kindle FreeTime to tablet-craving tykes
One of Amazon's subtler but potentially valuable promises for the Kindle Fire HD was its Kindle FreeTime mode -- a fenced-off world that would give kids a simple place to play and their parents the confidence to step away for a few precious minutes. It wasn't part of the initial launch, but a new update to the 7-inch model is rolling FreeTime into Amazon's latest tablet. The upgrade gives as much flexibility as Amazon promised, letting adults introduce filters as well as cap the time their children spend with different kinds of content. Most of the remaining updates pertain to general fixes; that said, we imagine that most parents won't mind the narrow focus once they know Junior can't watch Kill Bill.
Purported leak has Galaxy Note II for T-Mobile costing $300 on contract
While we're just a heartbeat away from Samsung's American launch event for the Galaxy Note II, that hasn't stopped the leaks and rumors from flowing around the release. What appears to be an internal T-Mobile page leaked to TmoNews has the 5.5-inch giant costing $300 on the carrier's Value plan -- on par with Sprint's up-front price, if you're not including the long-term device payments. Classic plan adopters would supposedly pay $420 before dutifully mailing in for a $50 rebate, and it would take a hefty $700 for an outright purchase. Nothing's definite until T-Mobile gives the green light, and we haven't seen the prices that every other carrier will offer, but the price if real could establish a common narrative where Samsung's biggest phone this year includes an equally large price tag.
LG exec claims Nexus due at October 29th event, ships to India one month later
It's either a premature confirmation or one of the larger executive gaffes we've seen in recent memory, but it's hard to ignore. LG's Mobile Product Planning lead for India, Amit Gujral, just claimed in an interview with IBNLive that the "LG Nexus" will launch at Google's October 29th event and ship to India "by the end of November." He even stuck his neck out to offer specifications -- the Nexus will reportedly have a very Optimus G-like 4.7-inch screen and quad-core 1.5GHz chip while throwing the unreleased Android 4.2 into the equation. Nothing's official so far despite the statements, and we're not expecting to Google to spoil its own party; if Gujral really does have the inside track, though, we may have been given a peek at the main attraction in Google's playground.
Isis' NFC payments go live in Austin and Salt Lake City: 3 carriers, 9 phones, 1 long way to go (video)
To say that the launch of Isis has felt drawn out would be a mild understatement. The alliance first signaled its intentions two years ago, detailed its first markets one year ago and faced a last-minute delay. All the ducks are finally in a row, however, and residents of both Austin as well as Salt Lake City can tap to pay (or score discounts) at the "hundreds" of locations that accept NFC-based purchases through American Express, Capital One, Chase and Isis' own cash card. Launch day brings app- and SIM-enabled access for nine devices spread rather unevenly across AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon: only the Droid Incredible 4G LTE is confirmed working for Verizon subscribers, while the rest are divided more equally between multiple Samsung Galaxies and HTC devices like the Amaze 4G and One X. Over 20 phones should be Isis-aware before the end of the year. It's a potentially strong start to one of the few truly cross-network mobile payment systems in the US, but we see a long road ahead before Isis gives Google Wallet some jitters -- there's legions of banks, cities and stores needed before Isis is widespread, and we're not counting on that ever-elusive universal hardware support.
HTC Droid Incredible X possibly spotted with Verizon badging intact (Update: DLX is short for 'Deluxe')
It's about time. The HTC DLX has most often been rumored carrying a Verizon-style 6435LVW or Droid Incredible X name, and yet it was unveiled first in Japan as the J Butterfly; we really needed the photos just now surfacing at Android Central to remind us that the 5-inch, 1080p gigantophone could still come to Big Red. While nothing's confirmed yet, the black-with-red-trim design and all too prominent Verizon labeling make a convincing case for the DLX's ultimate US destination. A helpfully provided phone profile screen might be more interesting to some, as it hints that we might get the same quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB of RAM and 8-megapixel rear camera as in the J Butterfly -- Verizon won't pull a Droid Incredible 4G LTE and tone down the hardware, if this is true. Without any more details, we're still left wondering just how soon Verizon could commit to launching the smartphone. There's no guarantees that Verizon will follow KDDI's schedule and ship in early December. Update: We've been wondering whether the odd name was meant to be short for Droid Incredible X, i.e. "DIX" instead of "DLX," but our friend @evleaks on Twitter just showed us a list of device PIDs that mentions the latter. @evleaks also suggests that DLX might be short for the codename "Deluxe" for the international variant, just as "ENRC2" was short for "Endeavor C2" (One X+). Update 2: It turns out the J Butterfly has the codename "Deluxe J" in its bootloader menu, so there you have it. Thanks again, @evleaks!
Samsung begins delivering Jelly Bean to UK-based Galaxy S III owners
Samsung has already started on the Jelly Bean upgrade path for the Galaxy S III, but that hasn't meant much so far unless you live in Samsung's homeland. The update's global relevance is expanding in grand fashion now that the company has confirmed the software is rolling out to Galaxy S III units across the UK. Variants on the smartphone for British carriers should get their taste of Android 4.1 over the course of a multi-week update process that brings everyone to the new version. Different carrier testing methods prevent Samsung from being any more specific; it's reasonable to say, though, that most owners living in Old Blighty should be running Jelly Bean before the holiday season kicks into overdrive.
Sony to start Xperia upgrades to Jelly Bean by mid-Q1, rules out all 2011 phones
We've got mixed news for those who were wondering just where Sony's Jelly Bean updates were headed. The good? Sony has narrowed down its upgrade schedule for the Xperia T, Xperia TX and Xperia V to the middle of 2013's first quarter, or roughly February. Just about every other reasonably capable 2012 model is also getting an upgrade once Sony has narrowed down the timetable, ranging from the Xperia S through to the Xperia ion and Xperia go. Brace yourself for the dark side of the news, however: not a single 2011 Xperia phone will make the Jelly Bean leap, no matter how quick or recent it might be. The company was "not able to guarantee" the experience the devices would have with the newer OS, we're told. While we know that some older phones would have been borderline at best, that cutoff won't be pleasant for anyone whose Xperia Arc S is already out of the Android upgrade loop after less than a year.
