Android Gaming: Xoom performance, Unity 3D game list
I'm not much of a gamer, but I did spend some long afternoons on Angry Birds when it came out and tried out quite a few of the Flash games that Adobe posted on their mobile showcase. This week Android showed it's gaming teeth with the Xoom blazing through some HD games and Unity 3D releasing the list of all games made its game engine, some of which were ported from iOS. For more info, a video of the Xoom and the game list read past the break.
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Google Launches In-App Billing For Android Market
Google revealed last week that the launch of in-app billing was about one week away from launch, and at the time, they opened the service to developers to being testing in order to make sure that their apps were correctly interfacing with Google's system. Late yesterday, Google finally launched the service for consumers.
Developers will be able to use in-app billing to charge for some aspects of their app which could be, for example, a new weapon, level, song, vehicle, or some special ability.
Some of the apps which are already implementing this feature include:
* Tap Tap Revenge
* Comics
* Gun Bros.
* Deer Hunter Challenge HD
* WSOP3
* Dungeon Defenders: FW Deluxe
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Android Now Has a Third of US Smartphone Market, Soaring Far, Far Ahead of iPhone
Wow. According to comScore, Android now captures 33% of the smartphone market, up from 21.4% in the end of September.
The figures come from a survey of 30,000 American mobile phone operators. The second biggest smartphone platform was rim with 29% and then Apple with 25%. Microsoft came in at a paltry 7.7%, down 1.3% since the launch of the Windows Phone 7 in November of last year.
The results of the poll matter because technology trends tend to center around dominant players (think Google, Facebook, Twitter), and when there are huge gains in one platform over another, developers begin focusing most of their energy on developing for that platform, which further increases the dominance and ubiquity of that platform. It's a snowball effect.
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Me And Android: The First Day
"What, um, is Android?" my friend Masha asked me when I told her about my new job at AndroidPIT. I tried to explain, and ended up sounding like a douschy salesman: "It's this platform for phones, developed by Google, that's rapidly growing in users and already the number one cell phone operating system," I hyperventilated. Masha's eyes glazed over: she owns an iPod. She will likely never switch to another phone. I showed her my phone. "Ohhhhh! This is like the phones that try to pretend they're made by Apple." Uh, yeah.
This was my first day with the Android. I'm a newbie, or NOOB in internet parlance. At times, I felt like a grandpa, clumsily fiddling with the keypad on my Samsung Galaxy while attempting to add people to my phonebook. "I just want to make a call with this damn thing!" I wanted to say in an asthmatic voice while cursing the heavens with my cane. Then I synced the phone to my Facebook app and "shazam": suddenly it looked like I could even call that boring kid who sat behind me in math class.
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Will Android-Based Tablets Ever Be Able to Seriously Compete with the iPad?
The pioneers get both the flowers and the arrows.
According to estimates by Deutsche Bank, sales for Motorola's Xoom, one of the first tablets to compete with the iPad, are bleak. The company has only managed to sell 100,000 of their tablet PCs thus far. That's probably the same number of people who bought iPads in the first few days after it was released.
So far, Android phones have been able to compete with the iPhone partially because of their low prices. But when an Android tablet costs a whopping $799, like the Xoom, it means the product has to compete both with both other small laptops and the iPad. That's just too much competition for an unproven piece of hardware.
When the Xoom was first released, reviewers were impressed by its technical prowess. To some reviewers it felt like someone had taken a powerful notebook computer, sheared off the keyboard and replaced it with a touch interface. But the Zoom didn't have the ability to use its own SD card slot, and only a few applications took advantage of its larger display.
There is certainly a product to be made to compete with Apple's iPad. I've always thought the iPad felt like an overgrown iPod, not a computer with the kind of capabilities that could ever replace my laptop.
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AT&T brings Android to the prepaid masses with the Froyo based LG Thrive
Prepaid phones used to be clunky, mostly unattractive and feature-less clunkers, but boy were they cheap. Plus, knowing you're not signing your soul away for a year or two offers much relief to the lesser quality of what you can get as a prepaid option. AT&T is now changing much of that by introducing the LG Thrive, a Froyo based Android phone that bring plenty of punch for the $179 contract-free asking price. Read past the break for more info.
The Thrive brings a 600MHz processor, 3.2-inch (480 x 320) screen, a 3.2 megapixel camera and unlimited WiFi usage on the entire national AT&T WiFi Hot Spot network. Its decededly plasticky body isn't the hottest thing around, but for an entry-level phone, there's worse. The blue version above is the Phoenix, identical in specs, but it'll run you $50 and it's available only on a two-year contract with mandatory data. AT&T is also serving up a mildly attractive 500 MB for $25 a month for the prepaid version, if you're so interested. Plus, this thing runs Froyo from the get-go, something some of its higher-end brethren launched within the last year can't say for themselves.
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What Does Unlimited Data on T-Mobile Really Mean?
This morning, T-Mobile announced a new 79.99 all-inclusive plan with unlimited calling, texting and data. However, there's a big asterisk over that word 'data": once users reach 2GB, they can expect their data rates to be slowed. How slowed? We don't know yet.
T-Mobile maintains that the majority of their customers only use around 1 GB of data a month, but when a company uses the word "unlimited" they should mean it.
Still, the new plan looks pretty great. Full press release below:
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Sony Ericsson Sets up Its Own Page on Android Market, Demotes My Apps to a Menu Button
Try opening up Android Market on your Sony Ericsson device and instead of finding "My Apps" on the menu, you'll be transferred to a Sony Ericsson channel filled with junk apps the manufacturer wants you to download.
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