ANDROID LOVERS can cheer because from 20 December they can hold in their hands a Google Nexus S running the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system that they can pre-order from today.

Care of Carphone Warehouse you can be the proud owner of a product Google’s CEO once said his company wouldn’t do. The prices are, £35 a month with a two year contract with Vodafone or £549.95 of your cold hard cash for no SIM card.

Back in July Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt told the Telegraph that the firm’s idea was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. He said that it was “so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one.”

Clearly once again the phone platform hardware business needs to move forward again. This moving forward means the new handset has a 4-inch Super AMOLED 480 x 800 WVGA capacitive touch screen and a 1,500mAh battery so it’s already a larger sized phone and weighs in at 129g.

But it’s the 1GHz Cortex A8 Samsung Hummingbird and 16GB NAND flash memory that is sort of a justification for the £35 a month price tag. The battery life claims for 3G use are 6.7 hours talk time and 17.8 days standby.

The phone also has a VGA front camera and 5MP rear facing camera for video calling, which can be via voice over internet protocol. All the usual connectivity and earjack and micro USB ports.

Reasons for the Nexus One failure included inadequate sales channels, meaning you had to buy it from Google, and product support. One imagines that that is why Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy UK are in on the act.

The handset also has near field communications, which is very near, much nearer than Bluetooth and is really for these swipeless payment systems.

Don’t hold your breath but it can only be a matter of time before that becomes some horrendous security issue. For developers, the Gingerbread SDK/NDK is now available, and in the coming weeks Gingerbread will be open sourced.

I recently moved from a blackberry javelin 8900 to a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate. Let me tell you about what happened and how I figured it out.

After ordering my device ( I live in Toronto, after a long call with Rogers customer retention they agreed to match other current competitors pricing like mobilycity or windmobile ) it came the next morning in a shiny black box.

I quickly opened the box, to find all the usual stuff. I opened it up and put in my sim chip and a 8 gig micro sd card from my blackberry. Installed the battery, and closed the cover. Then powered the bad boy up.

It’s a incredible experience, going from a dinosaur like the Javalin to something like this. The Visual Depth of the screen on the Samsung Captivate is stunning.

I went thought all the steps, set it up and was making calls before you know it.  The Samsung Captivate performed great.

I took some pics with its great camera and shot some video of my son. It performed great. I wanted to take those pics and video from the Samsung Captivate to my computer to edit them.

But sadly from this point forward I spent quite a few hours trying with no luck to get my Samsung Captivate to mount on my pc.

I have quite a bit of knowledge in the computer field and have mounted more than a few devices with my pc. But for some reason , I just could not figure it out. I researched it on line, just to find out that thousands of people are having the same problem.

It was to say the least frustrating! I’m thinking, “I cant have a phone that I cant sync!”

Let me tell you what the problem was and how you can get your device to sync.

It ended up being a simple solution, and a missing step!

You’re going to need the requisite drivers. I use Windows 7 64bit, and these worked for me, but your mileage may vary. You can find the Captivate drivers here. The USB drivers come in 32bit and 64bit flavours. I found I needed both the Captivate and USB drivers. Next, follow these instructions:

Make sure you install the drivers before you do the following steps!

This is how you can connect your Samsung Captivate to your Pc through your USB port

Step 1 )

Goto : Settings , Applications, Usb Settings

Set this option to Ask on connection

Now plug in your usb cable into your phone and then into your computer

Step 2) Take a look at the screen on your phone, it should say Select USB mode

There will be three options,

Kies(firmware update)

Media Player

Mass Storage

Select Mass Storage

You will notice the on the top status you will see a Usb connected message.

At this point many of us (including myself) would goto my computer and look for the device , but this is not the case

Step 3) The missing step!

Here it is, this is what I and most others missed.

Tap the top of your screen and pull down the status menu (its the top of your screen you will see the usb logo there)

You will see information there including a bar that has a heading of Ongoing

Under this you will see the usb logo and Usb Connected (Select to copy files to/from your computer)

SELECT THIS BAR (PRESS ON IT)

You will then see a pop up Saying USB Connected (you have connected your phone to your computer via USB. Select “Mount” if you want to copy files between your computer and your phone’s SD card.

Select MOUNT

You will see the phone status change to Turnoff Usb Storage

But what you will notice right after that is:

If you have Autoplay the drives will come up asking you what you want to do with them.

Also if you go to your computers drive listing, Shazam, there it is it will mount just like a normal drive.

You can now go get all your files, as well as put anything you like onto them including music!

There ya go thats it! this is what saved me from returning my Samsung Captivate.

Now I am enjoying the best smart device I have ever experienced.

Richard K

Motorola’s Droid 2 will be in stores Thursday for $199.99 with a two-year contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate (like the Droid X). The phone packs the Android 2.2 operating system, which has support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1. (The Droid X shipped with Android 2.1.)

Though the two phones differ physically–the Droid 2 is a slider smartphone, the Droid X eschews the physical keyboard–there’s a lot inside that’s the same, if not identical. (And note that the Droid 2 is quite similar to the original Droid physically, with the exception of relatively minor tweaks such as changes to the keyboard, as this animation shows.)

Processor: So, what’s inside the newest high-end offering from Motorola and Verizon? Like the Droid X, it uses Texas Instruments’ OMAP 3630 1GHz processor. This is a step up from TI’s OMAP 3430 processor inside the original Droid, which ran at 550MHz.

Wi-Fi hot spot: And the Droid 2 sports the TI chip that supports a built-in Wi-Fi hot spot, a nifty feature also on the Droid X. TI’s WiLink chip allows a user to create a hot spot similar to the access point in a Starbucks. Except, of course, that it’s not as fast as a typical hot spot since it’s 3G–not a DSL, cable, or T1 connection–and limited to five devices. (The hot spot costs an extra $20 per month.)

Digital Living Network Alliance: The similarities don’t stop there. Both phones support DLNA, or Digital Living Network Alliance, which enables them to stream video to a home consumer electronics device, such as a TV. This is also integrated into TI chips.

RAM and flash: The Droid 2 also comes with 512MB of RAM, like the Droid X. As to flash memory-based storage, on the Droid 2, a 32 GB microSD option is listed. Like the Droid X, it comes with 8GB on board.

Despite all of these chip-based similarities, there are some differences. The Droid X is spec’d with an 8-megapixel camera, while the Droid 2 has a 5-megapixel camera. And the Droid 2′s display is smaller at 3.7 inches versus 4.3 inches on the Droid X.

What’s next for high-end smartphones like the Droid 2 and Droid X? Dual-core processors, which would boost multitasking capabilities (not to mention performance) are coming in 2011. TI, for its part, plans to begin shipping a dual-core OMAP 4430 chip in the fourth quarter, which should make its way into phones in the first half of 2011.

Does an Android device with a 3.2-inch screen still qualify as a “tablet”? That was the first question that popped into my head when I saw images of the Archos 32 Android tablet that were published Tuesday by the FCC.

Maybe I’m still feeling the effects of my time with the Dell Streak, but aren’t tablets supposed to stretch beyond the confines of the pocket? Maybe not. It seems manufacturers have decided anything with a smartphone OS and a touch screen is a tablet–a tactic that may come back to bite them if Apple starts including the iPod Touch in their assessment of tablet computer market share.

Pontificating aside, the Archos 32 looks like fun. Along with details leaked from a short-lived product page on J&R, we now know the Archos 32 includes an 800MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, with 8GB of storage, running a custom version of Android 2.1 on a 400×240 resolution touch-screen display. Oddly, a touch-sensitive direction pad is also included beneath the display, along with more typical buttons for home, back, enter, and menu.

Further details reveal specs such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, composite video output, and a rear-facing camera capable of 640×480 resolution MPEG-4 video recording.

If the J&R leak is any indication, pricing should come in around $150, and the FCC filing has us thinking we won’t need to wait much longer.

Source : cnet

A computer virus attacks smartphones using Google’s Android operating system, triggering alarms over security. There are more than 3 million smartphone users in Korea and 1.13 million of them own Android phones.

The New York Times on Tuesday said a “Trojan” virus was discovered in Russia that specifically targets smartphones using Android. Kaspersky Lab, a Russian antivirus software company, said the worm takes advantage of Android phones after users install what appears to be a “harmless media player.”

Infected users unwittingly sign up for pay sites “resulting in money passing from a user’s account to that of the cybercriminals,” the newspaper reported. Lee Chang-hoon at Kaspersky Lab Korea said, “In addition to the New York Times report, Trojan horses have been discovered in about a dozen countries in the U.S. and Europe, and there’s a strong chance of infections being discovered in Korea soon.”

Android phones are more vulnerable to hacking than Apple’s iPhones. Google’s Android software allows anyone to upload and download programs, making it easy for hackers to spread malicious codes. “Korean manufacturers of Android phones such as Samsung and LG need to develop software programs that can inspect applications for viruses,” said Cho Hyun-sook of the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.

The government plans to announce a set of measures next month aimed at bolstering mobile Internet security.

Source : chosun.com

We’ve tried other Android () apps that have promised varying degrees of functionality and features for social media work and play; we’ve experienced varying degrees of satisfaction so far with all of them.

The TweetDeck app for Android is still “very beta,” a.k.a. lacking the polish you’d expect from a completely finished application. We tried playing around with it a bit tonight; while we’ll be delighted when more mature builds are available, we still think the app has breathtaking potential.

It integrates Facebook (), Twitter (), Buzz and Foursquare () accounts into a single application. Updates are color-coded and presented in a single, blended column. There’s also a “Me” column for reviewing all your Twitter @replies and comments and like for your Facebook posts.

Source : mashable.com

Cellphone carriers are very much like OEMs – there’s so much pressure to cut costs that they both go to great lengths to squeeze every penny possible out of customers. That means bundling crapware in the form of links and apps. But Android is synonymous with choice and freedom, and customers don’t take kindly to being pushed around.

In the UK, Vodafone tried to foist a crapware bundle on HTC Desire owners. What customers initially thought was a “Froyo” Android 2.2 upgrade turned out to be a bundle of crap containing “Vodafone 360 apps and a new Vodafone-branded start-up screen, and added various web shortcuts to the home screen.” Not only did the bundle contain web links to dating site (which some users found offensive), but others claimed that the update, which cannot be uninstalled, was buggy and made the handset unstable.

But pressure from users ad the media has caused Vodafone to have a rethink. Here’s the official statement from Vodafone:

Hi everyone

We’ve listened to feedback from customers on a number of points around the recent 360 Android 2.1 update and made some changes to the roll out plan.

The Android 2.2 update for Vodafone HTC Desire users will be based on the HTC open market version of the software and we will customise it to ensure our network settings are installed.

For customers who have downloaded the recent 360 update for Android 2.1, we can confirm that the Android 2.2 update will remove the 360 applications and will leave the homepage and bookmarks on your current settings.

Customers who want to access the 360 services will be able to do so once the Android 2.2 compatible version is available and, in the meantime, can now download apps like 360 People from the Android Marketplace.

We plan to make the 360 apps available in a separate update for the HTC Desire at a later date, giving customers the choice to download it.

We will let you know when the date for delivery of the Android 2.2 update is finalised, but, subject to testing, we expect this to be in 7-10 days time.

Thanks

Administrator
Vodafone eForum

Giving the customer choices and freedoms goes against the grain for carriers.

Source : zdnet