All Things Mobile

"The U.S. Department of Defense’s announcement last week that the Pentagon has given it the green light to bring Android in-house in the form of Samsung’s KNOX platform, currently supported on the Galaxy S4, is a huge bound forward for Android. DoD employees will now have a full range of mobile platforms to choose from; Apple is expected to get similar approval soon. The Pentagon also gave its blessing to BlackBerry’s new smartphones, the Z-10, and Playbook tablets running the BlackBerry 10 operating system." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"It’s no secret that Samsung enjoyed huge success with Galaxy S 3 (henceforth SGS3 and SGS4 for Galaxy S 4). In many markets, SGS3 was easily the Android handset to beat, even as faster and arguably better hardware became available during the life of its product cycle. Samsung nailed the branding, marketing, and consistency battles with its third generation of Galaxy smartphone, and now we’re a year later and facing down SGS4." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Launching a new mobile OS is a difficult project since the market leaders, Android and iOS, have such a big lead. Even Microsoft, with its near-infinite financial resources and vast ecosystem of complementary products, has struggled to gain traction. And new entrants face a chicken-and-egg problem: developers don't want to write apps for a platform without many users, while users don't want to buy a phone without many apps." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Launching a new mobile OS is a difficult project since the market leaders, Android and iOS, have such a big lead. Even Microsoft, with its near-infinite financial resources and vast ecosystem of complementary products, has struggled to gain traction. And new entrants face a chicken-and-egg problem: developers don't want to write apps for a platform without many users, while users don't want to buy a phone without many apps." - imabonehead

"Last week, Verizon began rolling out the Samsung Galaxy Nexus Android 4.2 Jelly Bean update to its owners, the last Nexus device in the United States to get the software. The software replaced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as the device’s operating system and while an incremental update, the software brought a lot of new features to the table. Here, we take a detailed look at the brand new Android 4.2 Jelly Bean update for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Third-party smartphone apps have been there from the early Symbian days. But the revolution really took off with the arrival of iOS and Android. Android and iOS with their centralized app store concept managed to attract tons of users as well as developers. Apps can be clubbed into 3 different categories basically; free (ad-supported), paid, and freemium (where users have to do in-game purchases to level-up and such). There are plenty of apps that command top dollar and help to make their creators very wealthy." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Last March, I wrote in Slate about eye-tracking, which could allow computers and smartphones of the future to collect information not only about what we read, but how we read it. It appears that the future has arrived. The Samsung Galaxy S IV, which is slated for introduction next week, will reportedly include an eye-tracking feature to make it easier to scroll pages without physically touching the screen. Some people will view this as an added convenience, and for people with certain types of disabilities, navigating by eye-movement can be a vitally important way to interact with objects on a screen." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"As I wrote last March, in a world without eye-tracking, our thoughts when we read something are largely our own, and we should enjoy it while it lasts. It looks like the curtain on one more form of privacy may be coming down a lot sooner than most of us expected." - imabonehead

"Mark your calendars Android fans, the most hyped-up Android smartphone of the year will be unveiled in just a few weeks. Samsung mobile chief JK Shin confirmed today that the Galaxy S IV will debut in New York City on March 14, Reuters reports (based on an earlier report from the Korean site Edaily). This confirms a rumor we heard last week marking the same date and location." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Huawei, a Chinese company that recently became the world's third-largest maker of smartphones, calls its new flagship product "the fastest smartphone in the world" and wants to use it to expand global awareness of its brand." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"The new phone, the Ascend P2, will have a 4.7 inch screen. Yu said it will be available in the April to June time frame for about $525 without a contract. It's the "fastest" because it supports faster download speeds than other phones. However, today's wireless networks aren't equipped to supply those speeds." - imabonehead

"Developers got their first hands-on peek yesterday of Canonical's Ubuntu Touch OS for mobile phones, with the release of the first developer beta. So did I. The good news: Ubuntu Touch is a more compelling mobile environment, even in the first developer version, than I expected. It borrows heavily from other mobile UIs, including BlackBerry 10, the iPad, Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone, yet manages to feel like its own OS. It's much too soon to rate, but the OS is promising, for reasons I explain shortly." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Luxury smartphone company Vertu has just released the Vertu Ti, the price of which is not listed on its website but was reported by Alex Dobie of Android Central to be $10,000. It runs a version of the Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, which is more than a year old, and lacks other typical high-end smartphone features like 4G wireless Internet." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

hmmm...no thanks. - imabonehead

"The LG Optimus G Pro hasn’t been much of a secret since it was announced for Japan a few weeks ago. Tonight, LG has finally taken the wraps off the device for its homeland of South Korea, unveiling the device unto the world for a likely debut at Mobile World Congress. Pretty much everything here is what we’ve already known of the device: 5.5-inch full HD 1080p display, 2GB of RAM, 3140mAh battery, 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor and 13MP camera." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

Phabulous - Rodfather from Android

"Smartphones using Google Android have outsold Apple's touchscreen behemoth this year in the Australian mobile market, according to a report. Google claimed 44 per cent of the market to Apple's 43 per cent, the new Telsyte Digital Consumer Study said." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"To help you prepare your defenses, here are the 10 dumbest things that people do (or fail to do) with their smartphones." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Yesterday we showed you the first ever live images depicting the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 in all its glory, being handled and all that. And today we have a couple more photos of the new Note device. You get to see the S Pen stylus too this time (in case you were desperately waiting for that)." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 will be unveiled during MWC next month, and rumor has it that it will come with a 1,280×800 touchscreen, a quad-core processor, 2 GB of RAM, and Android Jelly Bean (though whether 4.1 or 4.2 is still up for debate)." - imabonehead

"With no help from Verizon Wireless it looks like one of the most promising and exciting smartphones from last year has reached the end of its life. We’re talking about the 4G LTE powered Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon. Being the first “Nexus” (and I say that gently) to be available with 4G LTE and the nations largest carrier, it was a big deal. Sadly it wasn’t a big deal to Verizon and recently it took its last breath." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Mozilla has announced the official Firefox OS developer preview phone — the device that will be used by developers worldwide to test software for the new platform. The phone, developed by Geeksphone (in partnership with Telefonica), is a mid-range smartphone by today's standards: it's powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 CPU, has a 3.5'' HVGA multi-touch screen, a 3-megapixel camera, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of ROM memory." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

Only a small portion of Flash games have been ported to iOS & Android, and there’s a very big opportunity for game developers out there. Luckily, we built a multi-platform mobile development environment which can easily be learnt and understood by Flash devs, and more luckily, it’s free to download and use. - Gideros Mobile from Bookmarklet

Mobile applications and games is an interesting phenomenon. Only 4 years ago we all had simple phones (compared to what we have now), virtually no extensive appstores, no competition between Apple, Google and RIM. Mobile gaming was largely limited to Sony and Nintendo’s Nintento DS and Sony’s Playstation Portable. Apple has seen the light and created a ecosystem around a single device, with more than 100.000 developers, 500.000+ applications, more than 15 billion downloads and USD 2B payments for the developers - Gideros Mobile from Bookmarklet

"Watch Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth explain Ubuntu's mobile strategy and what it offers industry partners." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"As already teased and promised, today Canonical is taking the wraps off the mobile version of Ubuntu, which is built around the existing Android kernel and drivers, but doesn't use a Java Virtual Machine and promises to use "the full power of the phone." Supporting both ARM and x86 processors, the Ubuntu phone OS will be compatible enough to let Android phone makers run it on their devices with minimal adaptation." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Ubuntu for Android, announced in February of last year, will be the first step to getting this new ecosystem out to shipping devices, which Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth says will definitely arrive at some point during this year. While no carrier or manufacturer support has yet been announced, the first Ubuntu for Android handset should be provided by a "high-end" Android device maker." - imabonehead