Samsung Galaxy Tab was presented at the IFA show in Berlin today. This is the first real competitor to the Apple iPad and it’ll be fun to see how it will be received. The Galaxy is running Android 2.2 and has the size of 7″. It also has both front (1,3MP) and back (3MV) cameras, something I’ll envy as long as I have my iPad…. You can also use it for phone calls, with headset/mic or as conference phone placed on the table. Screen resolution is 1024×600 and it comes with 16GB internal storage and is expandable with another 32.
One thing I’m not quite sure about is the recommended retail price of kr. 7 400 NOK (about $1 200 USD and €940 EUR) . A bit expensive.
On August 9th, Kaspersky Labs discovered the first seriously malicious trojan application for the Google Android platform. It’s named “Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a” and disguise itself as legit Android application in form of a media player.
This, again shows how important it is to have some sort of control of the applications allowed onto a consumer device that is so heavily relied on as a phone is.
You could wonder? What is happening in the Oracle halls after the acquisition of Sun and Java? I must admit that as an MSFT .netter I haven’t been following the Java community for a veeeery long time, so I am not really sure how “healthy” it is, but my general understanding has been that Java and the platform has been moving more and more towards the Open Source, GPL licensing policy.
I remember reading something about fears for discontinuity of Java from Oracle, but this is not likely. Oracle is most certainly trying to figure out how to make money out of Java. Suing Google is one way of making money out of Java. What could be another way is to make Android go away leaving only one major java based mobile phone operating system left, Research In Motion (RIM) and the Blackberry.
Stephen Jannise, an ERP market analyst at Manufacturing Software Advice
has been following Oracle and had a close look at Oracle’s Mergers and Acquisitions. One of the companies he has nominated for merge/acquisition is in fact RIM, so could this be the angle? Push out competition, acquire RIM and then “own” the whole java developer community? Continue Reading
Just came across an article in Mashable about Oracle suing Google over copyright infringement in the Android operating system. What are Oracle thinking???? Android is THE single best thing that has happend to Java since AWT!
Claiming that Android competes with Java as “an operating system software platform for cellular telephones and other mobile devices” and that the Android stack employs Java apps running on a Java-based framework, Oracle says that Android and the Android SDK infringe on its patents, and it wants to see some cash for its unwitting involvement in the mobile OS’s success.
Oracle: Dont be stupid! don’t becom the next SCO – there is noting to gain from this whatsoever. Continue Reading
Through this spring i’ve been playing around with some iPhone development to teach myself Objective-C. It hasn’t been all fun..
With 10 years of .NET development behind me i’ve got a good understanding of development, and I read code in almost any language. Now a few days before i start my summer vacation have learned two things…
I really enjoy developing software.
I still find it painful to take joy in developing software in Objective-C.
It is two-folded; I don’t really like the language, and the standard IDE Xcode is an incomplete and non-productive IDE in my opinion. Continue Reading
Today Adobe announced the release of Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 to mobile platform partners.
Redesigned from the ground up with new performance and mobile specific features, Flash Player 10.1 is the first release that brings the full Web across desktops and devices. Mobile users will now be able to experience millions of sites with rich applications and content inside the browser including games, animations, rich Internet applications (RIAs), data presentations and visualizations, ecommerce, music, video, audio and more.
The Flash player is expected to be available as a final production release for devices once users are able to upgrade to Android 2.2 “Froyo.” Once upgraded, smart phones, tablets and other devices can be updated with Flash Player 10.1 over-the-air via numerous ways including content triggered downloads, system software updates and on-device app catalogs such as Android Market, Adobe Labs and other venues. The upgrade mechanism will vary by device and device manufacturer.
While we are waiting for the full release of Windows Phone 7 Series, with devices, Marketplace and applications; Android based phones continues to grow and has passed Microsoft and Windows Mobile in the global device market.
A Gartner report released on may 19. shows that Android is the quickest growing mobile operating systems.
The report looks at the global market and market shares in 1Q of 2009 and 2010 and shows that the market leader Symbian is down 4,5% and has now 44,3% share of the market , RIM (Research In Motion blackberry) is the second largest OS with 19,4% share, but is down by 1,2%. Apple is up 4,9% to a 15,4% share and Android is up 8% to a 9,5%.
The old Windows Mobile OS from Microsoft is down 3,4% to a market share of 6,8%. Continue Reading
The blog Linux on the iPhone has a recipe on how you can install Android OS through dual booting on 1. & 2. generation of iPhones. iPod1 has a Norwegian article about it too. This could be fun to try.
You need to use OpeniBoot, a bootloader to achieve this. A prebuild image can be downloaded from MediaFire together with detailed installation instructions.
The day we have been waiting for is finally here. Someone published malware in an appstore, and to no surprise it was published to the Android Marketplace. Norwegian newspaper Digi.no has written/translated an article form The Register about an phishing application written to hijack your banking account information.
This was bound to happen, and this is whythere is such a strict regime to submit applications into appstores like the Apple AppStore and the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Today’s smartphones are trusted devices and the general public does not yet think of their mobile phone as a device that needs antivirus, firewall and malware detection software. But as long as there are vendor solutions like the Android Marketplace; where there is no quality control and no reviewing of applications except for the user feedback from those who already have been fooled by such applications i think things will get a lot worse before it gets better. Continue Reading
When it comes to application development on the Windows Phone platform things are on the move. Lessons are being learned from the iPhone and its usability experience, from the Android platform etc. The lesson learned is that you need to pay extra attention to how your application looks and feel.
You should not under estimate the possibility of usability and design being the selling point in a purchase decisions before feature richness in a case where two similar featured apps are compared, where one looks and feels good, and the other has an extra amount of features beyond the core functionality it should handle.
As i am on the look out for a UI toolkit to standardize our enterprise development at work on I´ll compile a list of libraries that could do the job as i find them. The criteria for the search is ease of use and finger friendliness. Hopeful others also find this list useful. Continue Reading
Working as Chief Mobility Consultant at Creuna Norway. I received MSFT MVP for Device Application Development in June 2010 and are interested in mobility trends, the market, technology, software development for Windows Phone, iOS and Android mostly, but not exclusively. Scrum master that fights to keep it lean.
