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Table of contents

Android: A game changing OS

Re-discovering Android through 3G 04

Why Android is the culture for the future 06

How Google Maps and Android phones can help Indian Railways 08

the secret behind the naming of android’s Ice Cream Sandwich 10

Android overtakes Opera to become no 1 mobile browser 12

The best Androids money can buy

HTC One X Samsung S III, Who is Android king? 14

Sony Xperia launches three new phones in India 16

Galaxy S III has Siri clone, 50 GB free Dropbox storage 17

Motorola Atrix to be available for Rs 22,990 in India 19

Reliance launches CDMA tablet for Rs 12,999 20

Android-based media tablets: Do these have a future? 21

Awesome Android Apps

Why every Android user should get the new Facebook app 24

Feedly: The personalised magazine app for Android users 26

Fight aliens MIB III style on your Android device 28

Instagram now available on Android smartphones 29

Android in India

RCom, Google tie up to market Android devices with 3G connection 31

Samsung launches updated Galaxy Tab, interactive TV in India 32

iPhone 4S a flop; Samsung, HTC cash in on let down 33

Android: A game changing OS

Re-discovering Android

through 3GSwitching from a regular data connection to 3G on your Android is like switching from a regular

phone to a smartphone.

S witching to a smart phone from a not-so-smart phone is always an epiphanic moment. And if you are a regular Google

user (who isn’t these days?) watching how an Android phone so seamlessly integrates with your Gmail, YouTube and other Google experi-ences is in a word, epic.

Spend a few days playing with your phone and it will only be a matter of time till you start wondering how you got through life without

navigating Google Play (the app store formerly known as marketplace), or whipping out your phone to read everything from emails to arti-cles.

The one thing that can kill the entire experience though, is a slow net connection. Believe me there is nothing more frustrating than click-ing on a link and then waiting. And waiting. And waiting for it to open. And then woe betide you if you are reading an article that opens on

another page.

Most data connections unfortunately don’t give you the kind of connectivity speeds you need to fully enjoy your Android experience. You may have ‘unlimited data’ but you end up wasting a whole lot of time just waiting for things to load. And downloading apps from Google Play be-comes more frustrating than anything else.

Remember the time when you would surf on a 56k Modem and wait for pages to load so that you could get on with life? Well, without 3G, mobiles are pretty much like modem’s. To make optimum use of all that your Android smart-phone offers– you need a good net connection.

And when you switch from a regular data con-nection to 3G the difference is almost as stark as when you first switch to a smartphone from a regular phone.

With 3G, your Android just opens up to you. You can play games, use facebook, twitter, in-stragram and do it all in real time. With a good smartphone, you can probably even do without a laptop. Laptops are for work, smartphones, on the other hand, are the key to life in the digital age.

They’re handy, they’re powerful and they can do everything from helping you navigate a strange city to helping you figure out where all your friends are and what they are doing.

And you fully begin to realise the potential of your Android phone and just what a fiendishly clever little device you have on your hands. It’s like an epiphany all over again.

Why Android is the culturefor the future

While iOS might stand tall in American markets, markets like India than need customization or an

indigenous approach will always look towards Android.

W hen it is about smartphones it is al-ways about three things: device cost, applications and ease of use (read

operating system).

Reading the reams of copy around the recently concluded WWDC 2012 (the Apple develop-ers conference), one can’t help but admit that iOS has an advantage among developers. Most of them still prefer to code for Apple because the revenue per user on the platform is greater.

Fragmentation remains another challenge with 70% of developers still using an older version of the Android operating system, Gingerbread.

In the ease-of-use department, there are die-hard fans for both. An Apple fan boy will tell you that Android feels amateur and an Android fan boy will argue that the web integration of the Android experience is peerless.

But when you move to devices shipped across

geographies the story of economics, market share and therefore a culture for the future shows a shape, that looks very much more like a Droid than an Apple.

Fundamentally, to succeed in today’s world of complex technology a platform has to be open and free. Letting market makers decide how they want to develop, price and introduce a product will determine the success or failure of new technology. Google has, by letting android remain open, created a multitude of options for growth markets. When ‘touch’ is the revolution, users will want some form of it in their technol-ogy lives. They will move up the value chain, but slowly. Android gives you that ladder. Across phones and tablets.

For instance let’s take the Indian market. The Indian smartphone market is expected to grow to about 18 million units in 2012. It is however a complex heterogenous market where users are

still evolving.

Most handset makers in the country will offer a range of products across price points. Market leader Samsung for instance has 18 products on Android across different price points and holds 46% of the smartphone market. Indian lan-guage features and apps are also gaining a lot of traction.

It is therefore likely that in the future the grow-ing markets are the ones that will determine developer involvement. While iOS might stand tall in American markets, markets than need customization or an indigenous approach will always look towards Android. And in that search lies the new culture of smartphone use through android.

How Google Maps and Android phones can help Indian Railways

This automatically updated train running information will not only be a boon for passengers but also for the

Indian Railways as they would be able to track the position of all trains with a good deal of precision.

Prithwis Mukerjee

I have been a laggard with smartphones but last month I finally bought an Android phone and, within days, I got a tidy return

on my small investment— two extra hours on the upper berth of an overnight train! How ?

If you are travelling alone at night, in an AC compartment you have no way of knowing where you are at any point in time and the need to climb down every now and then to check the station that you are passing through is painful. Instead, what I did was to lie on the bunk and switch on Google Maps on my GPS-enabled Android phone and watched the blue arrow that showed me (and the train) as it snaked across

the countryside. Only after passing the last station before my destination, did I finally get down from the bunk feeling rather smug about this new technology.

This simple technology can be used to track the movement of all trains across the entire coun-try. How ?

Every Android phone is associated with a spe-cific Gmail ID and using this Gmail ID one can “check-in” into “places” defined in Google Latitude. Usually these “places” are hotels, res-taurants and other businesses defined by their respective owners and once someone “checks-

in” into a place, this information is available to “friends” on the Google network.

We first create a special Gmail ID to represent a specific train— say IR12302@gmail.com for the Howrah Delhi Rajdhani — and use this ID to register an Android phone. Next, we define each of the 219 stations on the Howrah-Delhi route as a “place” in Google Latitude. For this specific gmail ID, IR12302@gmail.com, we define these 219 stations as places where check-in is auto-matic. Finally, we give this phone to the guard of the the Howrah Delhi Rajdhani or tether it securely in the guard’s cabin.

Now as the train travels across the country, the Android phone will automatically check into every station that the train is passing through and anybody who defines this specific Gmail ID as a friend will know the last station where this train has checked-in and when.

The immediate benefit is that once the stations are defined as places — and a place once defined can be used for all trains passing through — and the Gmail ID for each train is set up, then the train running information becomes automati-cally available in the public domain with no further effort.

This automatically updated train running infor-mation will not only be a boon for passengers but also for the Indian Railways themselves, as they would be able to track the position of all trains with a good deal of precision from any-where in the country. Moreover, if this facility is extended to goods trains, then corporate ship-pers will be able to track their consignments if they know which train their goods are booked on.

However, there are few loose end that need to be tied up. First, one can only track a friend and to be friend, as in any social media, one’s friend request must be accepted by the target. This means that for each train id, e.g. IR12302@gmail.com, someone must accept friend re-quests from anyone who wants to know where the train is — but this can be automated as well. Second, Google Maps already identifies railway stations but does not allows people to “check-in” into them. If this is allowed then the task of defining all train stations again as business

places can be done away with.

Finally, and perhaps the most important, is how to handle the return trip. The down train would have a different train number but since the Gmail ID with which an Android device is regis-tered cannot be changed easily we need to have two Android phones per rake and only one, cor-responding to the train number that is actually running, must be active while the other should be switched off. So a pair of rakes that support an UP and DOWN train service would need four Android phones, two of which, located in differ-ent rakes, will have the same GMail ID.

The SIMRAN project of the Indian Railways has a similar goal but it needs its own dedicated hardware and software. Reportedly, the pilot project needs an investment of Rs 100 crore plus annual maintenance costs. In contrast, at Rs 7,500 per phone and four phones per pair of trains, this approach can use the free Google Maps service to track the top 100 trains in the country for an investment of Rs 30 lakhs or at 0.3 percent of the cost!

Google Russia has collaborated with the Rus-sian Railways to create an unique application that allows anyone to take a virtual ride from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Trans Siberian Railway. I am sure that if the Indian Railways were to embark on this project, Google India would be glad to help in this regard.

Many years ago, before the era of the ubiquitous cellphone, I had come across an FMCG compa-ny that tried to track the position of its trucks by giving food coupons to the drivers that could be redeemed at selected dhabas across the country. The idea was that as a driver “checks-in” into a dhaba and uses the free coupon to pay for food, the dhaba owner would not only get the money from the company but in return would report the position of the consignment — as evident from a code number on the coupon that was be-ing redeemed — back to the company.

That elegant idea was perhaps ahead of its time. But today, with Android phones and Google Maps, this idea can be easily implemented not only in the Railways but for any other trans-porter as well.

the secret behind the naming ofandroid’s Ice Cream Sandwich

Whilst tech journalists curse Google’s new Android codename, everyone else wonders what ‘ice cream

sandwich’ means and find themselves unaccountably craving dessert.

Suw Charman-Anderson

W ith the new version of the Android OS slated for release in October or No-vember, Android fans and tech writ-

ers everywhere are wondering what on earth Google were thinking when they decided on its codename: Ice Cream Sandwich.

Clearly Eric Schmidt isn’t keen on the name. At the Salesforce Dreamforce 2011 conference, he mentioned it with wrinkled brow, pulled face and a noticeable tone of disdain. So why go with such a bizarre name?

We know that Google has a sweet tooth. Previ-ous codenames included Eclair, FroYo (a brand of frozen yoghurt, rather than an obscure Hob-bit), Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

For those of us not familiar with an ‘ice cream sandwich‘, it turns out to be a dessert made of, unsurprisingly, ice cream sandwiched between two wafers, biscuits/cookies or cakes. And it seems that Googlers have a long-standing rela-tionship with them: business product manager Hunter Walk wrote a tribute to the “It’s-It” ice cream sandwich on sale in the Google canteen in 2006.

Whatever the reason — if, indeed, there even is a reason — for Ice Cream Sandwich, Google aren’t the only ones with a penchant for pick-ing playful, bizarre or downright ill-fated code-names.

Adobe Photoshop’s developers picked a string of entertaining codenames: Photoshop 2.0 was Fast Eddy, followed by Merlin, Brimstone and Tiger Mountain. Photoshop 4.0 was known as Big Electric Cat and, for those in the know, a secret splash screen could be summoned which featured Becky (short for Big Electric Cat), the moggie in question.The White Rabbit, Adobe Photoshop splash screen

All Photoshop’s secret splash screens, from ver-sion 4.0 onwards, feature Becky — also known as Udo — hidden somewhere in their illustra-tions. In Strange Cargo, (Photoshop 5), users could access the splash screen by holding down Ctrl/Alt (or Command/Option on a Mac), going to the Help menu and choosing About Pho-toshop. If you typed ‘burp’, Becky would appear from inside the floating cargo crate. Type her nickname, Udo, and she would miaow. Even the latest version, 12.1, pays tribute to the Big Electric Cat, showing The White Rabbit painting her portrait.

The open source community is also quite keen on quirky codenames. The Ubuntu operating system community, for example, has come up with a series of idiosyncratic, alliterative ani-mal names for each new version. They started with Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake, before moving to a roughly alphabetical series.

Whilst they managed to get creative with Jaunty Jackalope and Karmic Koala, the letter O clearly a lot of thought to come up with Oneiric Ocelot. “Oneiric” means “of or relating to dreams or dreaming”. It’ll be interesting to see if they have the nerve to stick with the alphabetical ordering through P and Q to X, Y and Z.

Apple, as one might imagine, has a long and colourful codename history. According to the

Apple Museum:

In the early days of Apple, the codenames were all female names, mostly the names of the daughters of the engineers who were working on the product.

Later, different types of apples were used, but when the teams ran out of apple types, they had to find new names. Hence after a couple of years the codenames were items from popular culture or products the engineers liked (such as beer).

A couple of them backfired, however. The Power Mac 6100 was codenamed Piltdown Man, the 8100 was Cold Fusion, and the 7100, squished in between them, was Carl Sagan.

Piltdown Man was a famous hoax from 1912 in which bone fragments were presented as the re-mains of an unknown early human. The lie was exposed in 1953 when the bones were revealed to have belonged to an orang-utan and a mod-ern human. Cold Fusion was a supposed room-temperature nuclear fusion process that was reported by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in 1989, receiving a lot of very excited media coverage. Their experiment was later dis-credited as they stood accused of “incompetence and delusion”.

Sagan was so upset that his name had been used alongside these two debunked ‘discoveries’ that he formally protested, said Lukas Foljanty, founder of The Apple Museum.

Apple hoped that codenames would reduce the damage that leaks about new products could do. Consumers were well known for putting off buying decisions if they thought that an upgrade was in the pipeline. But when the iMac was developed in 1997, Apple moved towards using code numbers for new products. The MacBook Air, for example, was simply known as M82. Apple have, however, kept names for their OS X software upgrades, possibly to make marketing easier.

In the grand scheme of product codenames, it seems that Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t all that weird. Although, whichever way you look at it, it’s still a bit of a mouthful.

A ndroid’s mobile phone browser Robot, has overtaken Opera to become the worlds number one mobile web brows-

er. TheNextWeb, which reported the statistics based on data from statcounter, said the data which plots the use of mobile Internet browsers over the last twelve months, shows significant growth from Android, which had only just over-taken BlackBerry to fourth place one year ago.

Apple’s iPhone and iTouch users have been categorized as separate metrics, which would

otherwise have seen Apple climb to the number one spot. And TNW says, “considering the nu-merical advantage that Android has over Apple — there are now more than 300 million Android devices worldwide, that’s up 250 percent — the fact that the iPhone ranks so closely shows that its users are proportionally more likely to browse the Web than Android owners.

BlackBerry’s share of Web browsing continue to plummet, while Nokia has also seen its browser account for less Web browsing over the period.

Android overtakes Opera to become no 1 mobile browser

Android’s mobile phone browser Robot, has overtaken Opera to become the world’s number

one mobile web browser.

The best Androids money can buy

Who is Android king?

Samsung S III

HTC One X

Is the HTC One X still the most superior Android phone despite the Samsung S III? We do a

preliminary comparison

U p until the launch of the Samsung S III last week, most experts agreed that the HTC One X was the undisputed “king”

of the Android Operating System. In fact some die hard HTC fans said it was even superior to Apple’s flagship iPhone 4S.

So how does the Samsung S III match up? The folks over at Tech2in, decided to pit the two phones against each other spec for spec, and this is what they came up with:

Design:

Samsung Galaxy S IIIThe Galaxy S III is a good looking phone on the front and the sides, but the design is not ‘revo-lutionary’, as we had hoped it would be. It’s an evolution of the S II, more than anything else. One thing we really appreciate is that despite its super slim design, Samsung has still kept the battery removable and have shaved off as much of the bezel as possible, making it manageable.

The HD Super AMOLED screen is great, but we wished they would have gone with the ‘Plus’ variant, instead. Connectivity wise, Samsung has you covered with thrown in everything ex-cept the kitchen sink.

HTC One XWe love the way the One X is put together. The polycarbonate shell feels strong and premium and it gives it a very nice feel, which is impor-tant to any handset. The screen may not be Su-per AMOLED, but the HD LCD 2 produces very good colours and since it’s a tiny bit smaller, the pixel count is more dense as well.

Features:

Samsung Galaxy S IIIThe rumoured 12MP camera didn’t make it to the final product. Instead we get the same 8MP shooter, but with a BSI sensor to help with low light photography. The faster processor has also allowed them to add burst mode, which captures a series of snaps in quick succession, allowing the consumer to then select the best one out of the lot.

We also have a Siri-like voice assistant that helps you automate mundane tasks. Samsung have shifted their focus on making the S III more intuitive and adaptable to your style of personal usage style. Whether they’ve succeeded or not, can only be determined once we have a go at it, so we’ll reserve our judgement on that till then.

Overall, the S III might not be the ‘holy-grail’ everyone was waiting for, but it’s certainly a worthy successor of the S II. As for the design, that’s purely subjective, but I, for one, only have an issue with the rear of the phone, which looks way too bland and the arrangement of the LED flash and speaker grill just seem off. Ohh and, did we mention they are still using plastic for the entire body?

HTC One X

One of the party pieces of the One X camera is its new burst mode and the short time it takes to activate and capture a picture. The Tegra 3 SoC may not be the fastest in terms of CPU power, but when it comes to processing graphics, it’s clearly in a league of its own.

The main issue when we reviewed (that’s hope-fully fixed with the latest update) the phone was the battery life, which, given the larger fabri-cation process of the SoC, isn’t too good. Just like the S III, it’s also packed to the gills with features, so there’s only one way to tell, which is better, by heading over to the charts.

Let’s just clear up some of the doubts you’re probably having about the scores. Like we men-tioned before, Super AMOLED may give you richer colours when it comes to accuracy, but the LCD 2 technology is better than the PenTile matrix used in the S III, as the sub-pixels are more densely packed.

The bottom line

Samsung’s latest flagship comes across as a clear winner and we haven’t even included the unique features present in the S III, like Smart stay, S Voice, Smart alert and many more. We cannot say for certain without testing the S III, if it’s better than the One X or not, but all the evidence points that way.

By the time the phone launches, i.e at the end of the month, the One X could get a price cut making it a very viable option. I guess it all boils down to how you feel from the moment you first hold the phone. After all, a mobile phone is a very personal device. We would recommend you get a feel of both devices before making the buying decision, since they are both very good handsets on paper; the rest is your personal taste.

Sony Xperia launches three new phones in India

S ony has unveiled three devices in its iconic Xperia series in India.

Priced between Rs.17,399 and Rs.25,449, the Xperia U, Xperia P and Xperia Solar were launched in Bangalore today. “Our new devices are a sign of the brand’s commitment to Indian users, especially youth, young professionals and upward mobile who would like to stay con-nected and access a range of services in voice, data and digital forms,” Sony Mobile marketing head Prasun Kumar told reporters at a product preview here.

“The Xperia smartphones have been designed around user experiences of listen, watch, play and create and share to improve their personal, professional and social life. The Sola smart phone boasts of ‘floating touch’ for accessing web services by holding any finger on the screen to open the links,” Sony mobile managing direc-tor P. Balaji said in a statement.

The company’s smartphones, which operate on the Android OS, are shipped to India from its manufacturing units in Japan, China and Mex-ico. The devices have been bundled with Tata DoCoMo teleservices.

“Partnering with Sony Mobile will enable us to provide customers with a compelling proposi-tion – that of accessing free data services (up to 3GB) on Tata DOCOMO platform, making for a new and invigorating mobility experience on Xperia Sola,” Sunil Tandon, head of non-voice services, Tata Teleservices to Telecom Lead.

Tata DOCOMO has introduced a gaming service called “Let’s Play on Android” – that lets users play premium Android Games on Xperia Sola on a very attractive monthly subscription of Rs. 99 only.

This exclusive package of games “GAMETANI-UM” consists of 30 premium games worth more than Rs.2000/-.

Galaxy S III has Siri clone, 50 GB free Dropbox storage

Samsung launched its Galaxy S III last night in London. Here is everything you wanted to

know about the phone.

S amsung launched its Galaxy S III last night in London and the phone is causing a huge buzz all over the Internet. Thanks

to the hype before its launch and the excitement after there are a few things we all know about the phone. We all know for instance, that it has a 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED display screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and comes with an 8 megapixel rear camera with flash and a 1.9 megapixel front camera.

We are also fairly certain that the device is super light as it weighs 133g and is only 8.6 mm thick. And finally we know that it runs Android

4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, and is powered by Samsung’s quad-core microprocessor and has 1GB RAM.

But now we have some more details of some other cool and lesser known features of the phone that seem to have wowed tech pundits.

It seems that Samsung has done some serious work on it’s rear end cameras. The camera is 8 megapixel which matches up to both the iPhone 4S and HTC One X. As CNET points, Samsung has taken some inspiration from HTC One X which lets users choose their best shot from a

bunch of shots. However it seems that Samsung has outdone HTC as CNET points out:

The implementation is different, though; the Samsung smartphone will automatically sug-gest the best image for you based on a few factors including smile detection and facial recognition.

Samsung has also launched the device with Siri like voice command program called S Voice. Now Siri is iPhone 4S’s popular voice command app that has gained quite a lot of popularity. Will S Voice manage the same level of interest?

In terms of appearance, it would seem that new phone looks bulky but is way lighter and this seems to have impressed several tech gurus.

The Verge’s Vlad Savov writes, The main takea-way when you first pick up the Galaxy S III is that it’s surprisingly light…the sensation of holding it is one of weightlessness. It almost feels hollow. We’re not huge fans of this, we ap-preciate a bit more of a reassuring heft.”

The one thing that seems to have got some criti-cism is the plastic rear body of the phone. Tech websites had been buzzing with rumours of a ceramic or metallic finished rear but Samsung has continued with plastic and it hasn’t gotten them rave reviews.

The Galaxy S III also boasts of a cool feature called the S beam which allows users to trans-port files upto 1GB to another S III without using Wi-fi or data Internet. This seems to be an expansion on Android’s Beam, an app which al-

lows data to be transferred for those users who have Ice-Cream Sandwich on their phone by just touching.

And if all this was not enough incentive to buy the phone, the latest reports are that Samsung has announced that that every consumer that buys and registers a Galaxy S III smartphone will get free 50GB cloud storage from Dropbox.

This is double of what Dropbox is giving HTC One series owners, however just like HTC, the free storage will only be valid for two years.

And in another piece of exciting news for fans of the device, it turns out that the popular iPhone app Flipboard will be available on Android as well.

AllThingsD reports that Previewed on Samsung S III today, Flipboard is coming to Android phones soon,” the company said on Twitter, pointing users to a page where they could pro-vide their email to get further updates.

Flipboard is an article, and news aggregation app that is quite popular on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices. But hopefully Flipboard will won’t be restricted to Android devices which only run on Ice-Cream Sandwich.

The phone will be available on 29 May in the UK, and is scheduled for a summer release in the US. The release date for India has not been announced. Fingers crossed that Indian con-sumers won’t be short changed with this phone like in the case of the Nexus!

Motorola Atrix to be available for Rs 22,990 in India

T he Motorola Atrix 2 aka the Motorola 4G Atrix 2 is available for purchase through online retail sites, Saholic and Letsbuy

for a price of Rs. 22,990. With the handset mak-ing a quiet appearance in the Indian market, it is expected to take on other smartphones that feature similar prices, such as the Galaxy R as well as the LG Optimus 2X.

For those of you who have no idea what this handset is about, here is a look at its highlighted specifications:

Android 2.3 Gingerbread4.3-inch qHD display with a resolution of 540×960

1GHz dual-core processor8GB Internal Memory expandable up to 32GB using a MicroSD card1GB RAM8MP camera with auto focus, LED flash and 1080p video recording capabilities at 24fpsVGA front facing cameraWi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v 2.1+EDR, USB 2.03.5mm audio jackaGPS, eCompass, Light and Proximity Sensor, Accelerometer1735mAh batteryDimensions are 66 x 125.9 x 10.49mmWeighs 147g

The Atrix is expected to take on other smartphones that feature similar prices, such as the Galaxy R as

well as the LG Optimus 2X.

Reliance launches CDMA tablet for Rs 12,999

R eliance Communication has launched India’s first CDMA tablet, priced at Rs.12,999.

The 7-inch capacitive touch screen Tab with Android 2.3 OS (operating system) from Reli-ance Communications comes with a 512 MB RAM and micro SD external storage. Weighing 397 grams, it has a 2 MP rear camera as well as a front camera.

The company, which launched 3G Tab last year, is offering a free 4 GB SD card with the CDMA version. The device supports up to 32 GB stor-age.

The tab was launched in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune on Monday.

Times of India quoted Reliance as saying that the tablet would be supported by the company’s CDMA network across 22 circles in over 1000 towns in the country.

The Hindu said that music director Anirudh Ravichander of ‘Kolaveri Di’ fame launched the Tab in Chennai.

Android-based media tablets: Do these have a future?

Worldwide media tablet shipments in the second quarter were driven by continued robust demand for

Apple’s iPad 2, which saw shipments reach 9.3 million units, representing a 68.3% share of the worldwide

market (up from 65.7% the previous quarter).

T ablet computing is growing at a fast clip. Worldwide media tablet shipments rose by an incredible 88.9 percent on

a sequential basis and 303.8 percent year on year in the second quarter of calendar 2011 (Q2 2011) to 13.6 million units, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker.

The worldwide media tablet shipments in the second quarter were driven by robust demand

for Apple’s iPad 2, which saw shipments reach the 9.3 million unit mark, which makes up 68.3% of the worldwide market, up from 65.7% the previous quarter. Research in Motion en-tered the media tablet market in Q2 2011 with its PlayBook product, grabbing a 4.9% share of the market. Apple’s strength and RIM’s entrance meant bad news for Android-based media tablets, which saw its collective share slip to 26.8%, down from 34% the previous quarter.

Based on this strong performance in the second

quarter and an improved outlook for the second half of the year, IDC raised its shipment forecast for 2011 to 62.5 million units, up from a previ-ous projection of 53.5 million units.

Looking forward to the second half of 2011, IDC expects Android to cede additional market share in Q3 2011 — dropping to 23% — before it starts growing its share again in Q4 2011 — go-ing up to 25.9% — and beyond. In addition to continued demand for Apple iPads, IDC expects many consumers sitting on the fence going for $-99 TouchPads as a result of HP’s decision to end production of its tablet product. IDC ex-pects close to a million TouchPads to ship into the channel before the end of the year.

As a result, WebOS’ worldwide market share is forecast to reach 4.7% in Q3 2011. However, with no clear plan to license or sell the OS to other vendors, IDC expects the WebOS market share to shrink back to zero by Q1 2012.

eReaders experienced a seasonal dip, down 9% sequentially, to 5.4 million units while year-on-year growth was 167%. Amazon led the market with a 51.7% share, followed by Barnes & Noble with 21.2%. With product refreshes and follow-ing strong Q2 2011 sales, IDC expects eReader shipments to grow significantly through the holiday season, reaching a total of 27.0 million units for the year, up from a previous projection of 16.2 million units.

“Media tablet shipments grew at a solid pace in the second quarter, led by continued strong demand for Apple products,” said Tom Mainelli,

research director, Mobile Connected De-vices. “We expect major vendors to offer their current-generation black-and-white eReaders for less than $100 by the holidays,” Mainelli said. “We’re also expecting Amazon’s much-ru-moured, colour LCD-based device to ship later this year. Because we expect it to run a custom-ised version of Android that ties its use to Ama-zon’s content services, we expect the device to more closely resemble Barnes & Noble’s Color Nook than Apple’s iPad 2. As a result, our cur-rent plan is to count it as an eReader, and that will also help drive shipment numbers.”

“eReaders are also gaining traction with a combination of increasing function and afford-ability, as well as greater device and content availability,” added Song. “The strong first half performance and an improved view of eReader positioning helped boost our outlook for ship-ment volume.”

Media tablets are defined as tablet form factor devices with color displays larger than 5 in. and smaller than 14 in., running lightweight operat-ing systems — such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS — and can be based on either x86 or ARM processors.

In contrast, tablet PCs run full PC operating sys-tems and are based on x86 processors. Media tablets support multiple connectivity technolo-gies and a broad range of applications which differentiates them from single purpose–fo-cussed devices such as eReaders.

Awesome Android Apps

Why every Android user should get the new Facebook app

Sheer speed, quick photo uploading and a beautiful design make Facebook’s new Android app a must

download on the Android market.

Shruti Dhapola

F acebook has done a damned good job with something for once – their latest Android app, released on 15 December is

amazing, especially when compared to the bug-gy thing they had released earlier. This probably explains its runaway popularity. Popular tech site TechCrunch, reporting the phenomenon said, “The Android app was launched in Sep-tember 2009 more than a year after its iPhone sister and has been playing catch-up ever since. Both are developed internally by Facebook. This week the two were briefly tied, but the Android

app is now pulling away with 58.3 million Daily Active Users (DAU).”

I updated Facebook on my Samsung galaxy S IT-9003 , after two weeks of ignoring Face-book’s pleas.

There were several reasons I had been resisting the Facebook update. The most important one being that the first app kept crashing. It loaded slowly, looked bad in terms of design, and frankly speaking, didn’t look anything like the

site. Also for some reason, the opening page had an unappealing photo bar at the bottom which highlighted the latest photos shared by my friends. Plus when the user logged in, the first thing that opened was never the news stream but an odd homepage Facebook had created for the app. For me the main problem with it’s design was that it was not minimalist. Instead, Facebook had used ugly square icons for drop-downs like friends, lists, etc. Nor did it help that it kept showing me ancient notifications. There I was getting excited that somebody had liked my status, when it was in fact last week’s news. Nothing puts a user off more than receiving old notifications.

In fact when I had first bought the phone, I de-leted the first Facebook app I had downloaded because it kept crashing ever so often. I wasn’t even keen on trying to update status messages from my phone nor was did I feel like upload-ing pictures, primarily because it was a pain to keep the app running for long. The next down-load didn’t make for a great experience either, even though the number of times it crashed was lesser. But the slow loading speed, meant I rarely used it.

After the update however, I have started using Facebook on my phone a lot more. This despite the fact that I don’t have 3G on my phone and it has a bare minimum memory of around 4gb. The app loads really quickly, much faster, in fact, than the website does on my computer!

The timeline is also already active on the new Android app, a feature that was made available for the iPhone app much later (on 18 Decem-ber). In terms of design it is truly beautiful. All the lists appear on the right-hand against a black drop down menu, sort of like the new Google bar. (I can overlook the Google rip-off because it’s so pretty. )

What also helps is that the app looks exactly like the website. It means that a new user won’t have to worry too much about learning how to navigate the app, a problem that I felt was very evident in its previous iteration.

But speed is the main reason I love this app. I’ve already mentioned that I have very little RAM and memory to spare. When compared to the average newsreaders apps on my phone which crash very often, the new Facebook app has not crashed and caused me to press the task man-ager button as yet. It’s surprisingly fast with no-tifications too; I say surprising because most of the time my phone has no Internet connection. Also, I have found that I can upload images in less than ten seconds, despite complaints to the contrary in the Android market user reviews.

Facebook chat, which I think is still the buggi-est chat ever released, is also surprisingly not so buggy on the app. Messaging is actually faster on the app; unlike the site where chat often crashes. In addition to the site app, I download-ed Facebook Messenger, which is way better than the chat on the website. Chatting on the actual website is a pain if you don’t have a fast enough connection; as you will find that friends will often disappear in the middle of a conver-sation, and you’ll only receive their messages a couple of hours later.

I can’t comment on how popular Facebook Mes-senger will be in India, primarily because it will have to compete with Google Talk, What’sApp, and BBM which are the major instant messag-ing apps used in the country right now. For now what has proved to be a big hit for me is the of-ficial app for the site.

Overall Facebook has a done great job with their Android app and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Facebook app grows faster than any other app on the Android market.

Feedly: The personalised magazine app for Android users

Feedly is one Android app highly recommended for those who need their daily dose of news, videos and

other random stuff online.

Shruti Dhapola

M umbai: An app is a more personalised mode of browsing the net on your smartphone. We’ve gone from typing

www.com on our desktops to opening a news app with just a touch of our finger. Every major news website or newspaper, now has its own app; websites are passé; the app is more impor-tant.

Personally even I though I’ve downloaded many news apps on my phone, I don’t find myself browsing through all of them. The one app

that I do end up using often however is Feedly, which sychronises a user’s personal RSS Feeds. Despite many who believe that RSS will soon die out because of the app boom, I’d still recom-mend Feedly and here’s why.

Easy Synchronisation: It’s easy to merge with Google Reader RSS feeds if the user is logged into their Google account via their phone. For those who’ve not used Google reader before and therefore have no feeds to synchro-nise, there’s no need to panic. Once Feedly

opens, the user only needs to touch the little RSS icon on the left hand side (also the Feedly icon) and a drop down menu will appear. The menu gives the user several options. The user can just type the name of their preferred news source into the search bar and Feedly will do the rest. For instance if one types Reuters, the numbers of feeds that come from Reuters are displayed. There’s also a tiny people icon to the right which displays the number of people who’ve subscribed to that particular feed. Just touching the feed link will display the latest news from that site. Tapping the little plus on the top right hand corner will add it to your RSS feed.

Feedly also gives bloggers the option of sync-ing their Tumblr RSS feeds into the app. It also comes with certain preloaded sections under categories like Technology, Photography, Gam-ing etc. These can however be switched off by going to advanced settings.

Feedly’s biggest advantage, in my view, is its ability to aggregate different kinds of content. From blogs like Tumblr to web comics to vid-eos, to regular news, it works well with content which may not always be text based.

No need to open another web browser: For those who’ve downloaded Google reader app on their Android device, the pain of using that app is truly experienced when trying to click on a complete news story. Google Reader redirects the user to the link via the Internet browser. Which leaves you wondering why there’s a Reader app which forces you to use a broswer on your mobile phone.

Thankfully Feedly does no such thing. The user clicks on the story, and the complete story opens within the app. Feedly does ask the user to go to the website to view the story, but doesn’t open the website in a different applica-tion. With this app, the user doesn’t need to keep shifting to other applications.

Save and read later: Smartphone users are likely to have so many news apps that one might think that there are too many apps, too much news available and not enough time to read all of it. Similarly, RSS feeds can be hard to man-age, especially when a user subscribes to many

feeds.

With Feedly, it’s quite easy to manage that constant swarm of new feeds. When one opens a link, there’s a pencil shaped icon on the top right-hand pane. The user can click that and the article is saved for later reads. All saved articles can be then viewed via the dropdown menu box which is accessed by tapping the Feedly icon on the left-hand side.

Design and aesthetics: The app market is shallow; an app’s design can make a big differ-ence to user experience. Feedly’s design is quite easy on the eye with a minimalist user interface. The dropdown menu also has a nice design, with an all black background with white text. Each of the feeds also has a tiny personalised icon next to it.

When the app loads, the first news story on the feed covers the whole page, with an image, headline and excerpt, but it doesn’t look unusu-ally large on your phone screen. The user, then has to slide right for more stories from the feed each of which appear in similar fashion.

Most importantly the font is quite readable in normal view. The font size can be increased by clicking on the zoom options that appear with the post. Currently the design has two theme options; white and black. Personally I prefer the white background theme, since the text in the black theme appears in grey and is not that easy to read.

Sharing options: Sharing posts that we like to read is an important part of the whole app expe-rience and with Feedly there are several ways to do it. On the top right-handside of each article is a simple dropdown menu button which will give a user all the options to share. The user can also email an article to a bunch of friends at the same time, by going to the advance settings and adjusting CC and BCC settings.

Overall Feedly is quite a useful app since you can tweak it so much to your personal needs and maintain access to content for which apps are not always available. For those don’t want to spend too much time browsing through differ-ent apps Feedly is highly recommended.

Fight aliens MIB III style on your Android device

If you have an Android device, you can get a taste of what it would be like to run your own MIB agency thanks to the new free for download MIB III game.

A lways thought that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones had the coolest movie jobs ever? Despite the obvious hazards

of helping tentacled aliens give birth, and other life threatening side effects of policing and regu-lating earths resident alien population, being an ‘agent’ has obvious perks. The clothes and shades certainly don’t hurt. And then there are all those gadgets. So. Damn. Cool.

And now if you have an Android device, you can get a taste of what it would be like to run your own MIB agency, thanks to a free game released by Gameloft. According to Cory Gunther of An-droid Community, “Honestly the controls aren’t the best and the feel and play reminds me a lot of The Sims, but the graphics are cool and hey, it’s free.”

The game is a freemium title so it’s free to play,

but users can make in-app purchases for weap-ons and the further advance into the world of the Men in Black.

In the game, you get to create your own MIB agency where you will train agents and assign them to missions. You also get to play with those awesome MIB weapons like the the Neu-ralyzer and the Noisy Cricket. Agent J and K are not included.

Like in the MIB III movie however, there is some time travel involved. You will flit between 1969 and 2012 New York, fighting aliens across the city. The game can be played in one person mode, but has an element of social interactiv-ity. You can invite your Facebook friends to play and can ask them for help during fights against particularly powerful aliens.

Instagram now available on Android smartphones

Instagram, one of the most popular photo editing and sharing app available for iPhone and iPad users is

now finally available on Android smartphones.

A ndroid users have reason to rejoice. In-stagram, one of the most popular photo editing and sharing apps available for

iPhone and iPad users is now finally available for Andoid as well. While Android already has a ton of other photosharing apps such as Little-Photo, PicsArt, Lightbox, etc there has been still a lot of yearning for Instagram.

Last month, the app had crossed 27 million downloads on the iPhone. Instagram allows users to add various innovative filters to photo-graphs and share them with others. In 2011, it

was voted as the best app for Apple and a dedi-cated community has been built up around it.

However as TheNextWeb has pointed out in this post, searching for Instagram in the Google app store is a bit like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Apparently it is still buried buried deep in the search results and requires some diligent and dedicated trawling around. (Also watch out for fakes!)

Is this one more nail in the coffin of Apple fan-boy snobbery?

Android in India

N ew Delhi: Reliance Communications (RCom) today said it has entered into an exclusive partnership with Google to

market all devices built on Android platform for two years in India with its 3G connection and other facilities.

“In line with the rapid growth of smartphones in the country, Reliance has collaborated with Google to catapult the change by providing new experience to device users in terms ofpeed, coverage and app (applications) ecosys-tem across segments,” RCom’s Group Head for Brand and Marketing Sanjay Behl said in a statement.

Market sources said that RCom has made an

initial commitment to invest between Rs 25-30 crore in promotions. Through this collabora-tion RCom will offer an exclusive free 1GB usage per month 3G plan to all Android device users, the statement said.

RCom said that it will introduce expert custom-er care, carrier billing, exclusive applications and content in addition to Android experience zone at Reliance retail outlets across the coun-try. To reveal the distinctive affiliation between Reliance and Android, RCom has introduced the Reliance – Android “BLUE BOT” advertise-ment campaign across various platforms, the statement .

To reveal the distinctive affiliation between Reliance and Android, RCom has introduced the Reliance - Android “BLUE BOT” advertisement campaign

across various platforms

RCom, Google tie up to market Android devices with 3G connection

Samsung launches updated Galaxy Tab, interactive TV in India

B ig things are in store for the geeky and not-so geeky gadget lovers in India! Samsung Electronics has announced

plans to launch a smart interactive television in India. The product was unveiled at the 2012 South West Asia Regional Forum held in Bang-kok. The futuristic television sets allow users to control them through voice or motion com-mands, which means users can turn the TV on or off, activate select applications or search for select content in a web browser – without touching the remote.

The Economic Times reported that the S8000 LED Smart TV features a built in camera with microphone, voice control, gesture-based con-trol and face recognition. Thanks to the built in camera, users can also have face-to-face video chats over Skype.

ES8000 is also the first in a series of upgradable

TVs. An add-on Smart Evolution Kit will enable new features on the TV as and when they be-come available. Prices for the Indian market are expected to be Rs 80,000 onwards.

The smart interaction is available on the com-pany’s 2012 flagship smart TVs, including the LED ES8000 series, LED ES7500 series and the plasma E8000 series.

Zee News said meanwhile, that the price of the smart TVs would range from Rs.45,000 to Rs.2.65 lakh.

Samsung also announced an update to the Gal-axy Tab, called the Galaxy Tab 2 310. Featuring a 7-inch screen, 1Ghz dual-core processor and the latest version of the Android OS, it weighs just 345 grams and still retains support for 3G and voice calls using a standard SIM slot. It is expected to be priced at Rs 23,300 in India.

iPhone 4S a flop; Samsung, HTC cash in on let down

Apple faces a tough battle in India, the world’s second-biggest market for mobile phones with more than 850

million subscribers, where smartphones account for just over 5 percent of the total mobile handset sales.

A sian smartphone makers have a chance to exploit a rare letdown from pacesetter Apple after the new iPhone 4S failed to

wow fans and investors, leaving Android rivals better placed to grab market share.

The iPhone — introduced in 2007 with the touchscreen template now adopted by its ri-vals— is the gold standard in the booming smartphone market, and its sales have dealt a

blow to ambitious plans of many competitors.

Shares of Samsung Electronics, HTC and LG Electronics, who all make phones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system, ended up on Wednesday.

These companies could now aggressively pro-mote their flagship high-end models ahead of Christmas, potentially helping boost sales in the

most crucial shopping season.

“Apple no longer has a leading edge, its cloud service is even behind Android; it can only sell on brand loyalty now,” said Gartner analyst KC Lu in Taipei.

“Users may wait to buy the next iPhone, if they can’t wait, they may shift to brands with more advanced specs.”

The new iPhone 4S is identical in form to the previous model, disappointing fans who had hoped for a thinner, bigger-screened design of a product that had not been updated for more than a year.

While the device’s high-tech wizardry such as voice commands — for sending messages, searching for stock prices and other applica-tions — caught the attention of many analysts, it might not be enough to make it a must-have for consumers.

“Major concerns for Samsung had been that its smartphone momentum will decelerate with Apple’s new iPhone, but that’s now less of a con-cern as the new iPhone failed to excite many,” said Kim Young-chan, an analyst at Shinhan Investment Corp in Seoul.

Shares of Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC rose 0.6 percent in a weaker Taipei market, while Korean rivals Samsung and LG climbed 1.7 percent and 0.4 percent respectively, in a broader Korean market down 2.3 percent.

MID TO LOW-END STRATEGY

However, Apple’s move to price the iPhone 4S from $199 in the United States, and analysts’ es-timates of lower price points in major countries, could help the company expand in developing markets such as Asia, Samsung’s backyard.

Apple is cutting the price of the older iPhone 4 to $99, and said an even older 3GS model will be available for free to customers who sign a long-term contract. This might allow Apple to take a bite out of a low-end market it had es-chewed.

“The continued sales of the iPhone 4 and 3GS

are a bigger story, because they represent the best answer Apple has to its strategy for emerg-ing markets and the low end of the smartphone market,” said Ovum analyst Jan Dawson.

Even before the low-cost phone, Apple was set to exponentially grow its China business as it stitches deals with operators in the world’s larg-est mobile phone market, home to more than 900 million subscribers.

Apple faces a tough battle in India, the world’s second-biggest market for mobile phones with more than 850 million subscribers, where smartphones account for just over 5 percent of the total mobile handset sales.

“Very aggressive pricing in the higher-end cat-egory of smartphones is unlikely in India in the near future, primarily because the volumes are not strong enough to justify that kind of play in that segment,” said Deepak Kumar, research director at IDC India.

TOP SELLING SMARTPHONE

Phones based on Google’s Android, which is available for free to handset vendors such as Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola, have a great-er combined market share than Apple’s iPhone, which is still the world’s No. 1 selling smart-phone.

“There are still many consumers who don’t have the iPhone experience, and Apple still has a lot of markets and carriers to enter, so when there’s a new model with better specs, it helps to lift shipments,” said Ming-chi Kuo, analyst at Con-cord Securities in Taipei.

“The iPhone 4S targets users who are expiring on their two-year 3GS contract.”

Globally, iPhone shipments rose 9.1 percent in the second quarter while Nokia’s plummeted more than 30 percent, handing the top spot to Apple with a market share of 18.4 percent, ac-cording to IHS iSuppli. Samsung, whose ship-ments grew faster, is coming on strong with a market share of 17.8 percent.

The lukewarm reception of the new phone hit shares in Apple’s suppliers.

Taiwan’s Hon Hai, Apple’s biggest supplier, was down 1.9 percent, while casing company Fox-conn Technology fell 6.9 percent. Camera mod-ule maker Largan Precision shed 6.6 percent.

“The casing companies should be the most-hit, correcting from the previous rise, because the market has expected a metal case for the new iPhone,” said Mike Fang, a fund manager of Paradigm Asset Management.

Fang did not expect iPhone shipments to drop on the disappointment over its appearance

however, as a cheaper price would allow sales to expand at a faster pace.

“The demand is still there from users upgrading from iPhone 3GS because it’s two generations behind,” he said.

In Japan, the country’s second-largest mobile carrier KDDI will sell Apple’s new iPhone, end-ing rival operator Softbank’s highly profitable reign as the sole provider in Japan.

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