If you’re walking around a city with your Apple iPhone you’ve got a 101 apps telling you where to go, where to eat and where to look cool holding your Apple iPhone. However if you’re carrying your HTC G1 or G2 Magic around you might feel a little bit more lost. Up until recently the tourist guide apps have not been as plentiful on Android as they have been for the iPhone, but now there is a great one out there for you Google heads.
Places Directory has just been released for the Google Android OS and it offers you a simple interface with great functions. The app finds your location by your GPS and then will give you a list of close by attractions and sites. You can check bars, restaurants, theaters and whatever may be close by. Select the place you’re interested it and you can call them directly or get directions through Google Maps
This great for tourists who are a bit worried where they’re going to get a decent bite to eat in a foreign city. It will let you feel a bit more at home in a strange land.
Download it from the Android Market Place or here!
Samsung’s first Android OS phone the I7500, which was announced recently, gets a pretty thorough video walkthrough by Tech 65.
The video shows off the I7500 quite well and it looks to be a fantastic phone. From the video the resolution and screen size looks fantastic and appears to have a quite responsive touchscreen. The phone is running the Android Cupcake v1.5 Firmware which is what we assume it will be shipping with.
The specs in the video aren’t completely correct. The phone will be coming with a 5 megapixel camera. Included with that will be 8GB of internal memory, video recording (!!!) capability, GPS and the option to expand up to 32GB of MicroSD video. Very cool stuff.
We are quite excited to see a new take on the Google Android OS from Samsung. Check it out!
I cannot help but be amazed by what people can do and are willing to do with their phones. In the video below there’s a nice clip of some geniuses who turned their Android OSHTC G1 into a metal detector.
This is something that I definitely never thought of, but these guys did.
There’s no explanation of how it’s done, but speculators believe that they’ve isolated the magnetic compass inside the phone to operate the app.
Pretty cool example of what you can do when you have open source access to an OS.
The people at Boy Genius Reportare confirming that the Motorola Calgary will be Motorola’s first Google Android OS mobile. This announcement comes hot on the heels of Samsung’s first Android phone the I7500.
The mobile is planned to be released for Verizon by the fourth quarter of this year. The phone, from preliminary pictures, looks pretty cool design wise. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of details in regards to specs, but rumor has it that the phone will be highly focused on social networking sites and apps and of course be fully integrate-able with Google services.
This may be just what Motorola needs to get out of their slump and also may be an indication of Google building up steam with this young OS.
How does this change your feelings about Motorola? Willing to give them a shot in the smartphone game?
The new Mobile Gmail for both Android phones and iPhone / iPod Touch OS 2.2.1 has finally hit the shelves. Frankly not for BlackBerrys yet! ( crossing my fingers ). The new gmail experience on your mobile browser will give you a taste of it’s real encounter on your desktop browser.Also, According to google, the app is faster in performing actions like opening an email, navigating, or searching, and allows you access and compose Gmail messages without a network connection . Most interestingly, using the new Gmail on your devices doesn’t require any installs — it’s utilizing HTML5 and its offline storage APIs already present in the browser.
One of the main gripes with the Google Android OS, especially with the HTC G1, is that there was no document editor or even viewer on the phone. As a perfect example of the market responding to demand our wishes have been answered.
Voila the Documents To Go app from DataViz. This handy application basically addresses all of our previous concerns and allows us to view and edit documents of many different formats. This includes rich text formatting and also a fairly versatile Excel spreadsheet editor.
The only drawback to this? It’s $30 USD. While maybe 5 years ago this would have been a steal, the era of free and useful apps is upon us and it can be a bit of shock to fork over that kind of cash. But considering there are no other obvious options for what we see as this very important function, we would say it is worth the price.
As predicted the Android system that got off to an admittedly slow start is starting to become more and more useful as developers begin to contribute. This particular application is a fairly big step to making Android mobiles more viable as business tools.
Those of us who have been touting the benefit’s of Google’s Android mobile OS open source nature and all of the possibilities it may bring have suffered a bit of setback today. Google has announced that it will be banning certain Wi-Fi tethering apps from the Google Marketplace as it violates “distribution agreements with device manufacturers and Authorized Carriers.”
What this is means is that T-Mobile doesn’t like the idea of their HTC G1 clients of getting an app which allows them to connect their laptop to their mobile and use the mobile as a modem over the 2G or 3G network.
As T-Mobile seems to be calling the shots in this case, when other carriers and manufacturers start using the Android OS it will be interesting to see whether they act in the same way. Will they place bans on apps which don’t suit their fancy or will open source truly prevail.
As Android continues to develop we will have to keep an eye on how carriers and manufacturers will deal with peoples demands and their own.
If someone were to ask you few years ago about your new cellphone it may have been something like what features does your phone have? Do you have GPS? What kind of camera? Now, it’s all about OS. That is operating system, what can it do and how well can it perform?
The heavy hitters out there at the moment are the Apple iPhone OS 2.21, the up and coming star, the Google Android OS and then the recently unveiled iPhone 3.0.
So who takes the prize? It’s hard to tell at the moment. Our friends at Lifehacker have put together a handy features chart letting us know how they stand up against each other on paper:
But what does this all mean? Usability can’t be quantified in graphs and a lot of it comes down to personal taste. However, each OS has its distinct advantages. Google Android, being an open source platform, has the opportunity to become much more widespread than the iPhone OS and be on multiple hand sets. This type of diversity will make Android diverse and sought after by many different users.
On the other hand the iPhone OS is designed specifically to the Apple iPhone, which allows developers to be much more focused on the task at hand and not dumbdown functionality to suit the hardware needs of multiple devices. This can make for much more powerful and useful applications.
So who takes the cake? (Or cupcake *sorry*) That’s for you to decide. Let us know what you’re more comfortable with? Will the new iPhone 3.0 OS change anyone’s mind?
OK, HTC G1 owners. You can stop holding your breath. We finally have a firm release date for the highly anticipated Google Android update “Cupcake” and that is in April. So get ready G1 users, you’re in for a treat.
The “Cupcake” update has been touted as one of the saviors to the Android OS and people are definitely going to be happy when it is officially available.
The update includes the following:
Virtual QWERTY keyboard. No more having to slide out the keyboard for a quick text!
Video recording,
Bluetooth stereo streaming
Voice recorder
Saving attachments from MMS capability
One of the features that is not in the update is the multi touch capability. We’ve seen demos of it being possible, but it still seems that official developers are going to leave that to the side for now.
These are a few of the updates which is just going to keep making this Android OS even stronger. Although developers and tech heads were quite happy with the Android release and its talk of open source, many regular users were disappointed with the actual functioning of the OS because of its ostensible limits. However as it is a few months old and updates are starting to gain steam, we believe that its popularity will start to jump quickly.
Whether or not the upcoming HTC release, the Magic (or G2) will come equipped with Cupcake, has yet to be determined. We’re hoping yes, but if not updates should not be difficult.
Does this change your mind about Android in anyway? Have you had any good or bad experiences with it?
Is it possible that google is soon to emerge at another segment by coming up with a Google Netbook?
It’s all in the words of Google’s CEO Erick Schmidt “What’s particularly interesting about netbooks is the price point. Eventually, it will make sense for operators and so forth to subsidize the use of netbooks so they can make services revenue and advertising revenue on the consumption. That’s another new model that’s coming.”
