Archive for category phones

IDC on Android

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Market Share, phones on May 13th, 2009

idcFrancisco Jeronimo of IDC expects Android to grow around 420 per cent to a total of 3.6m units worldwide in 2009. Why are operators keen on Android? He says..

“Operators want to balance power between OSs in order to keep control of the market”

“Android is a free OS, it’s a sufficient mature platform for most operators and vendors, has a powerful brand behind with all Google’s services integrated and it has a good touchscreen user interface”

So why are some operators seeking to remove Google specific services?

G1 1.5

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Firmware, phones on May 8th, 2009

My G1 updated to 1.5 this morning. Here are my initial thoughts…

  • My greatest previous criticism of unusable sluggish camera has been fixed.
  • The phone still doesn’t seem to keep hold of WiFi connections very well. Not as well as S60 or iPhone.
  • My installed apps that quickly toggle settings such as WiFi no longer work (because they can’t access these settings any more).
  • As with iPhone, tricky to write lots of text with onscreen keyboard.
  • Strange I was asked to accept new Android Market Terms of Service.
  • All my freeware applications work ok. Great!

Develop on the G1 Without a Device

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, phones on April 30th, 2009

deviceanywhereIt can be difficult developing for Android if you are not in a country that’s selling real devices yet. You can buy a developer phone but it costs a lot, especially the shipping.

DeviceAnywhere might be a solution to get you going while you wait for a device. It allows you to run your application on a real, live HTC device connected to T-Mobile in the US.

Android Market Fragmentation

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Android Market, Linux, My Freeware, phones on April 22nd, 2009

pocketgamerbizPocketGamer.biz has an article on ‘What’s wrong with Android Market’. There are lots of criticisms of the Market many of which I have also expressed here and on MobilePhoneDevelopment.com. However, there’s one new piece of information at the end that I found interesting…

“At least one major carrier is specifying their Android devices to come without the Android store”

This ties in with my previous thoughts that some Android phones might not come with a full set of Google applications.

Presumably a carrier not using the Android Market would implement their own application store. From the carrier standpoint, I can see the sense of this in terms of controlling what’s on their store, app certification, the commission structure, payment mechanisms and ultimately perhaps what the users can install on their Android phone. However, I can see consumer confusion as to why they can’t get particular applications on their phone. There’s also likely to be general developer disillusionment that they can’t easy publish their application to all Android users.

Non Google-centric Android Phones

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, phones, samsung on April 6th, 2009

forbesI have previously written how my current personal choice of phone (the G1) was determined more due to sync with existing Google services than the hardware itself.

According to Forbes, Samsung, or more specifically their customers (network operators) have different ideas…

“Samsung also wanted to put its own spin on Android. Hong drew a distinction between devices built on the Android platform and “Google Experience” devices, which not only use Android but are also Google-centric, packed with the search giant’s own applications. “Our commitment is more to the Android phone than the Google Experience device,” Hong said.”

It will be ominous if the next batch of Android devices has great hardware but all the Google-centric applications are missing. One workaround might be if Google were to publish any missing Google applications on the Android market so that people who don’t want the carrier-provided solutions on the phone can install these for themselves.