Android Overtook Symbian

Atlast the much awaited thing has happened. Google's Android has took over Nokia's Symbian as the most popular smartphone platform in the fourth quarter 2010, according to the research firm Canalys. According to Canalys a total of 32.9 million Android phones were sold in the fourth quarter considered to Symbian phones overall sales of 31 million. Symbian couldn't simply withstand the Android charm which jumped from 20.3 million in Q3 in 2010. One mighty leap that is. Symbian also improved from 29.9 million in Q3 to 31 million in Q4. But that was simply not enough. Well brace yourselves for what is going to happen next quarter. Hope we could see something even more greater than this.

Android event on Feb 2nd

Google has announced an Android event at Headquarters in Mountainview on February 2nd, Wednesday for in depth details of honeycomb. And if you couldn't attend it don't worry, the whole thing will be live on youtube.com/android . Well this is going to be fun.

Will we be hearing about android 2.4? Don't know. Brace yourselves, this will not turn out to be entirely fruitless.

Android 2.3 Bug

Researcher at North Carolina university has warned about a gingerbread security vulnerability that gives attackers access to your personal information. the bug allows malicious websites to access and upload the contents of a user's microSD card, including voicemails, photos, and online banking information to a remote server. This issue was also present in the previous edition of Android, and was said to be addressed in 2.3. But it can easily be bypassed. The only solution now is to take off the micro SD card, Turn JavaScript off or use third party browsers. Google is said to be developing a bug and has released no word about it yet. Well hope that there is some fix very soon.

SIM unlock application

Helroz, from XDA has devoloped an application that will unlock your android device in just a few easy steps. No need for the extensive coding.

The application will work with Galaxy S devices that shipped with Android 2.1 and has been throughly tested and confirmed working with these phones.
In order to run the app, you will need to be both rooted with BusyBox and have an active internet connection. The process is simple, you just follow the 3 step process and watch as the phone will automatically unlock itself.

Also this is not a final version so you will have to test at your own risk.

Here is the link.
visit XDA thread

First Android non touchscreen phone

Motorola has launched the first non touchscreen android device. The Motorola i886. It cannot be said to be purely android as it seems to be running some sort of android. But more or less it is Android.

It's built for sprint's iDen network. It has a very few normal android apps. It seems to be running a J2ME virtual machine on top of the core Android platform. The i886 doesn't have the android market nor many of the native android applications which was actually created for touchscreen phones. It has access to Getjar application catalog.

Both Sprint and Motorola has kept mum till now about the software. They didn't specify anything other than saying it is proprietary.

android development course in NJIT

Android in school is one great concept that should gain much more momentum. We would all love to see application development in schools.

Now New Jersey Institute of Technology has is offering public courses for anyone for wanting to learn how to develop for android. This thing will start on January 18th 2011, on 1050$. Well this might not be much considering the quality of education and considering that what you learn is to develop for android.

Register by Jan. 17, 2010 athttp://cpe-njit.mobi/.

Consider this course an excellent way to get a start on developing applications for a tablet operating system," said instructor Tim Kellers.

This is an online course offering Android applications for software simulators and hardware devices.
NJIT will award three continuing education units (CEUs) upon the successful completion of the course. Study topics will include getting started, Android controls using XML, table layout in Android, interface themes, creating background services and using the WebKit. More topics include user interfaces, programming services and investigating multi-threading. Each student will design their own final project application, a culmination of performed tasks and assignments included in each module.

Well considering the fact that Android will be growing no matter what, learning how to develop applications for android seems to be a good option for studies.

android to grow in 2011

Research firm canalys has stated that android will grow at double rate in 2011, even with the release of verizon's Iphone and the perceived fragmentation of Android OS. They infact predict that both these factors should not affect android and they will continue to grow at double the rate.

According to Canalys Q3 2010 estimates, the Google-backed platform already claims a 25% share of the worldwide smart phone market, with over 20 million shipments of Android-based worldwide.

‘The growth of Android has been phenomenal, but so too has the number of related devices launched with different hardware and software specifications,’ said Canalys Principal Analyst Chris Jones. ‘This has led to the market perception of it as a fragmented platform, though we believe that growth will continue as the pace of Android OS upgrades slows.’

Well I think we all will have to disagree on the slow updates of Android. Android still is super fast on the release of updates. They have the gingerbread, honeycomb and ice cream sandwich will be released in a span of 6 months. Of this gingerbread has been released a month before. Honeycomb though not released had it's first tablet launched, motorola xoom. And I believe ice cream will be out soon.

‘Fragmentation affects all OS platforms, though it is particularly visible with Android due to the fast pace of upgrades that has characterized its growth,’. ‘The problem has been less pronounced on competitive platforms, such as Apple’s iOS, as devices have been able to support the iOS 4 upgrades since the iPhone 3G. Nokia has also sought to minimize its fragmentation issues by utilizing the cross-platform Qt framework.’

Vendors working on Android have leveraged the open source platform to push prices down and bring smart phones to the mass market. As a result, Android shipments grew more than 1,000% through the first three quarters of 2010 over the same period in 2009.

The platform has benefited established vendors, such as Samsung and HTC, but also enabled PC vendors, such as Acer, to enter the market with a broad product range spanning smart phones and pads.
‘Vendors are trying to differentiate further on the hardware front, with faster and more powerful processors, as well as larger screen sizes,’ said Canalys Senior Analyst Daryl Chiam. ‘Last week, LG announced the first smart phone to support a dual-core processor, while Acer and Samsung showcased smart phones with screen sizes of 4.8″ and 4.5″ respectively.’

‘With Android’s momentum expected to stay strong, the installed base of Android-based smart phones and pads will rapidly increase - good news for developers,’ said Chiam. ‘To be successful, developers must be prepared to cater to the abilities of the different device categories, tweaking the user experience of their applications accordingly. This additional effort is well worth the potential benefit of broader application distribution.’
‘To support developers, Google must also make substantial enhancements to the Android Market, including the ability to detect device platforms, highlighting the applications suitable for each, which would improve the user experience and increase the number of downloads,’ said Chiam.