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Tag: Google Android

  • Samsung Galaxy S III to Get Premium Suite Upgrade

    Samsung Galaxy S III to Get Premium Suite Upgrade

    If the popularity of Google’s Nexus devices is any indication, Android users really are looking for a pure Android experience. An experience without all the (mostly useless or niche-case) “features” added by manufacturers and carriers to make their phones unique. Still, Samsung has been focusing heavily on software for its Android devices.

    Toaday, Samsung released the first preview of what it is calling the “Premium Suite Upgrade” for the Galaxy S III. The device only just got access to the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade on all U.S. carriers this week, nearly five months after the mobile OS launched. Expect significant delays with the Premium Suite as well, as carriers take their time testing the software with their networks.

    The Premium Suite Upgrade will include several software features. Page Buddy is a contextual program that will launch applications or change settings when certain conditions are met, such as docking the smartphone. Contextual menus and tags will also be added, automating the phone’s capabilities even more. Mulit-window capabilities similar to those on Samsung’s tablets have also been added, which is perhaps the most useful feature of the update, and the Galaxy S III’s screen is just big enough to make it work. NFC auto-sharing over S-Beam and a Facebook Lock Ticker have been added, as well as a “Reader Mode” that reformats websites for larger text an easier sharing.

  • Grooveshark is Back For Android Devices

    Grooveshark, the streaming music platform, has finally had its app reinstated for Android platforms. The app, which is now available in the Google Play store, allows users to stream genre radio stations, make custom radio stations similar to Pandora, and play on-demand music. The on-demand music streaming is a feature that only subscribers who pay $9 a month can use.

    For almost the entirety of 2012, Grooveshark has only been available to Android users through the Grooveshark mobile web app, which was created when the Grooveshark app was banned following legal troubles. Grooveshark has been sued by all the major music labels because it doesn’t have the rights to much of the music that can be found through its service. Even the deal the platform tried to work out with EMI was a failure.

    A spokesperson for Grooveshark this week told VentureBeat that its Android app was reinstated after the company worked closely with Google to remove “rogue apps.” Its statement also hinted that the company would be “pioneering” new distribution and monetization techniques.

    Grooveshark has also updated the visuals of its Android app with new default album art, larger album art in places, and new album art transitions. It also now includes playback support for the HTC One S and One X, both of which have a branded Beats Audio feature.

  • Google Cloud Messaging for Android Saves Battery Life and Kills C2DM

    Between Google’s big announcements of the Nexus 7, Nexus Q, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and Sergey Brin’s crazy skydiving spectacle, its not improbable that you may have missed the news about Google’s new Cloud Messaging service for Android.

    Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM) is, according to the description on the Android developer website, “a service that helps developers send data from servers to their Android applications on Android devices.” The service can send a message of up to 4 kb to an application on an Android device, most often to tell the application to retrieve a larger set of data. GCM will now handle all queueing and delivery for messages to Android applications.

    GCM will be taking the place of Google’s previous mobile application service, Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM). A message on the help page for C2DM has announced that as of yesterday, June 26, C2DM has been officially deprecated in favor of GCM. C2DM is no longer accepting new users, though Google will be maintaining C2DM for “the short term.” Developers will have to use GCM in the future and move their existing applications that use C2DM over to GCM.

    GCM will feature several improvements over C2DM. First of all, there are no sign-up forms to use – developers simply obtain an API key from Google. Google claims the new service has no quotas and increases battery efficiency. GCM also supports multicast messages, multiple senders, and time-to-live messages. Developers can get started using GCM over at the API guide on Google’s Android developer website.

  • Complete Your Portal 2-Themed Android Phone With a Wheatley Live Wallpaper

    Were you one of the lucky few in the U.S. who were actually able to get their hands on a Samsung Galaxy S III yesterday? Can’t get enough Portal? Why not create an entire Portal theme for your spiffy new Android phone? You can start with a new Live Wallpaper that puts Portal 2‘s Wheatley right in your smartphone’s background.

    The Wheatley Live Wallpaper sets the background of an Android phone (one running version 2.2 and up, at least) to the likeness of everyone’s favorite dumb and insane personality core. Wheatley’s eye will follow the user’s finger around the screen as they navigate the Android home screens. Unfortunately, the wallpaper won’t feature Stephen Merchant’s voice or any witty banter. Users can, though, change the color of Wheatley’s eye. Check out the short YouTube video below that demonstrates the wallpaper’s functionality:

    The Wheatley Live Wallpaper was created by a Malaysian developer named Wye Mun Chin. Chin has created other Live Wallpapers for Android, including one similar to the Wheatley Live Wallpaper based on the movie “The Ring” that has the ghost girl’s eye follow the user around the screen. He has also created a game for the Android operating system called UFO Pew Pew. The Wheatley Live Wallpaper can be downloaded for $1 through the Google Play app store.

    (via DroidLife)

  • Google I/O Event Schedule Shows Heavy Chrome & Android Focus

    Developers for Google platforms treat Google’s yearly I/O conference like a rock concert. The tickets for this year’s event sold out in 20 minutes. At the conference, developers are treated to the best advice Google has to offer about programming and designing for Google’s many platforms, as well as major announcements about future Google products. Google has even been known to give away cutting-edge tech to attendees.

    Two months after registration opened for the conference, Google has finally released a schedule for the event. The calendar for the three-day even is up on the Google Developers website, and can be sorted by day and by tracks, which include Android, Cloud Platform, Google APIs, Google Drive, Google TV, and YouTube, among others. Clicking on a session provides a brief description of what it will be about, and allows users to add the event to a schedule that can be built on the site.

    With so many sessions and lectures on the schedule, it will no doubt be difficult for attendees to fit in everything they would want to. This is especially true for those interested in the Android or Chrome tracks, which have the most sessions scheduled, including some that overlap. Developers could spend five hours every day soaking up the expertise of Google’s Android experts and still not see it all.

    The Android track for the conference features topics such as accessibility, monetization, navigation, and Android style, as well as sessions titled “Ten Things Game Developers Should Know” and “The Sensitive Side of Android.” The Chrome track covers HTML 5, Native Client, Dart, and GRITS, a player versus player shooter game created using HTML 5.

    Those lucky few who are able to attend Google I/O will also be treated to the best machines created through Google’s fun new Chrome experiment. The experiment is so fun, in fact, that it delayed the writing of this very article.

  • Google to Expand Its Android Nexus Lineup

    Until now, Google has chosen one manufacturer to collaborate with and create a spec phone for new versions of Android. In 2010, HTC and Google created the first of these smartphones, the Nexus One. For the next two years Samsung was the chosen manufacturer, creating the Nexus S and the new Galaxy Nexus. These phones were often then only devices with the newest version of Android for months before other manufacturers got around to releasing their modified versions of the updates.

    Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google will be working with multiple manufacturers to create Nexus-branded devices. The Journal cites a “person familiar with the matter” as saying Google will “work with as many as five manufacturers at a time to create a portfolio” of Nexus-branded smartphones and tablets. Also, Google will sell the devices through its website and, possibly, through retailers. The first Nexus phone, the Nexus One, was sold through Google’s website, but, despite high expectations, sales were poor. Google quickly abandoned the web-sales model and embraced retailers.

    The reasons for this new approach to Android are clear from Google’s end. Though Android is open-sourced to give manufacturers room to modify the operating system for their needs, the clean installs of Android that come on Nexus devices are generally regarded as a better user experience. The changes that manufacturers make are, more often than not, implemented to limit the Android OS in some way, or simply to differentiate the aesthetic look of a manufacturer’s phones. By creating Nexus devices with every manufacturer, Google will be giving more consumers the choice of a pure Android experience. By allowing more customers to see pure Android in action, manufacturers will have a harder time convincing them that their crippled, out-of-date versions of the OS are acceptable. It will also encourage smartphone makers to update their non-Nexus phones in a more timely manner.

    Given the rumors that Samsung may be creating its own smartphone operating system, it’s certain that Google wants to keep control of the Android ecosystem it created. To do that, it will have to foster competition between Android device makers, and giving all major manufactures early access to Android updates is a great way to do that. Allowing Samsung to run away with the market and re-brand itself and the only “real” competitor to Apple could mean the death of the real Android.

    To begin this process, Google is already selling the latest Nexus smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, in the Google Play store. The phone is sold unlocked and is available for $400.

    (via The Wall Street Journal)

  • Google Music Now Preventing Device De-authorization

    Most Google Music users will never know it, but there is a limit to the number of devices that can be authorized and associated with a single Google Music account. Specifically, only 10 different ROMs may be authorized. This limit was never a problem for ordinary users. For edge cases, such as tech journalists who review many phones, a simple, if roundabout, solution was to de-authorize old phones or ROMs in the Google Music settings.

    Now, however, the hackers over at the XDA Developer forums have discovered there is a new limit to the number of devices that can be de-authorized. User Amphibliam on the XDA Galaxy Nexus forum revealed that Google is now preventing the de-authorization of more than 4 devices per year for each Google Music account. The smartphone users in the XDA community often root their Android phones and flash them to an updated ROM frequently, meaning this new limit prevents them from experimenting with their phones as much as they would prefer.

    There is no word yet on why Google has implemented this limit. It really only affects three very specific types of users: the aforementioned tech reviewers, the Android modding community, and Android app developers, who must test their products on a wide variety of phones to ensure compatibility. These are precisely the users that Google does not want becoming unhappy with its services.

    (XDA-Developers via Slash Gear)