Facebook Home has been heralded by some as Facebook’s first shot at Google and Apple and a warning that they’re going to enter the phone market with their own phone and OS soon. Still others have warned that Facebook Home may spell trouble for Google. I think Facebook Home is great for Google and great for the Android ecosystem as a whole.

When Facebook first sent out their press invitations the Facebook Home event, the Menlo Park-based company only hinted that it was going to show off its new home on Android. Immediately bloggers and journalists began to conjecture that Facebook was going to announce that it had forked Android. HTC was tied to the announcement early on according to rumors, prompting numerous stories asking if Facebook was indeed going to finally make a Facebook phone with their own OS based on Android on HTC’s hardware.

This idea was preposterous, of course. In order for HTC to make a device with a forked version of Android, HTC would have to leave the Open Handset Alliance (something that Acer learned the hard way). Even if HTC didn’t have the shackles of the OHA holding it back, HTC is in no condition to risk Google’s ire by making a fork of Android. HTC needs all the help it can get, and the only place that help is likely coming from is Google.

If you pull HTC out of the equation and assume that Facebook either secretly entered the hardware manufacturing business or found another hardware partner that isn’t a part of the OHA (go ahead, try and think of an OEM that Facebook would trust that isn’t in the OHA and would fork Android) then Facebook would still have to come up with a solution for getting people Android apps outside of the Play Store. Even more importantly, if Facebook was forking Android, wouldn’t they want to avoid talking about Android like Amazon does? Without the Play Store, companies like Amazon have to emphasize that the OS running on the Fire and similar products is familiar like Android, but different in that it doesn’t have any of the apps you purchased (who are we kidding – Android users don’t buy apps!).

Lo and behold, Facebook was not planning on forking Android to make their own phone. Instead, Facebook made an app that can run on almost any Android phone (or at least it will), making any phone a Facebook phone. This approach requires far fewer resources (although the quality of the app suggests that Facebook had undoubtedly worked hard on making a their own version of Android) and reaches far more of Facebook’s one billion users than they ever could with one phone.

This approach encouraged journalists and bloggers to wonder if this move was bad for Google. “Surely Google is upset that Facebook is taking over the lock and home screens of devices instead of Google+! Google has to strike back with Google+ Home!” The thing is, Google already has that plan in place – it’s called Google Now. Right now Google Now may not have Plus integration, but that sort of thing must be just around the corner (Babel is just another move by Google to consolidate all communications under your Google+ profile – you have “upgraded” to Google+, haven’t you?). Now seems destined to become the hub for your notifications and content on every platform (all your email, messages, directions, searches, websites, etc.).

Making a Google+ Home would make Google look like they were caught with their pants down by Facebook’s announcement. Google undoubtedly knows that a Plus Home would not be nearly as popular as Facebook home, so any efforts in that direction would be a waste of resources. Besides, if Google can get Android (and iOS) users to get used to finding everything they need in Now, they’ll win. Facebook may continue to be the main place for social interactions, but Now will hold everything else.

The reality is, Google has nothing to worry about. The HTC First runs stock Android underneath and has all of Google’s services from search to maps to Gmail. While Google may want people to be using Google+ over Facebook, Facebook Home isn’t hurting Google’s bottom line. Even with Home installed, users will still be reliant on Google’s services and seeing and tapping on Google’s ads. Facebook would have too many obstacles to overcome if they wanted to really challenge Google with their own phone and OS. Facebook and Google are certainly both after the same thing (information about users to sell advertisements), but that doesn’t necessarily mean one company has to win and the other has to lose.

So if Google still has tons of information about their users to sell ads and doesn’t have to worry about Facebook forking Android, why should Google be worried? Facebook Home is actually a really good thing for Google. What platform has the best Facebook experience? Only Android. Sure, you can get the Facebook app on iOS, Windows Phone, and Blackberry 10, but only on Android devices do you get the best experience for interacting with your friends on Facebook. While a lot of tech nerds seem to dislike Facebook, regular people love it. Having a phone or home replacement that is designed around the app you have open 90% of the time could be really compelling to users. It may not make a lot of people change from iOS or Windows Phone, but it may convince some to stay with Android so they can keep that great Facebook Home experience.

Facebook has set a new standard for what can happen with home screen replacements and how people can and should interact with their phones. Microsoft may have pioneered the idea that people should come before apps, but they didn’t push the idea that you should stay on your phone interacting with them in such a deeply enveloped way. Facebook has come a really long way from their first mobile apps to native apps for Android and iOS to Home. I’m excited to see a new wave of innovation in the home screen space as well as what else Facebook will do in mobile.

Facebook Home is Good for Google and Android [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

When I first saw the Pebble I was honestly amazed. As the amazement wore off and the waiting settled in, I daydreamed about receiving notifications and being able to control my music from my wrist. Then, I received my Pebble and reality took over.

Now that I’ve had the Pebble for a week I’ve resorted to turning off the Bluetooth and using the watch to tell time and play Snake. Was it worth $150 for that? Not really, but I do love being able to shake my wrist to activate the backlight. Even though I’m generally disappointed with the Pebble, having it has made me think more about what a smartwatch should do and whether or not it’s a product that has the potential to change the way we interact with the world around us in a meaningful way. 

I think smartwatches will be like the first cell phones and smartphones. When the first cell phones came out people questioned why you would want to take calls anywhere. Smartphones simply extended that question to emails and the web. What we found was that we were able to stay connected with people, our information, and the world around us in insanely meaningful ways. We also found that our lives became increasingly more cluttered and distracted because of the influx of information and the ease with which we could be accessed. Smartwatches will never be the next smartphone, but they may be useful in some circumstances. We’ve already seen some of the initial reactions to smartwatches and they fall in line with early responses to cell phones and smartphones. Are you so lazy that you can’t just pull your phone out? Do you think you’re that important that you need to have yet another device? Chances are none of us are really that lazy or that important, but the idea of having another device to keep us even more connected in an unobtrusive way may still be tantalizing.

If (and this is still a big “if” at this juncture) smartwatches are able to show us information and interact with data in a meaningful way, they could be a major new disruption in the market. That said, I don’t think anyone is going to solve the big problems (UI, battery life, input) facing smartwatches without making some incredible compromises that will push most consumers out of the market. Those of us remaining who have the money and the patience, however, may be looking for the ideal product for a while.

Input and Notifications

The largest obstacle facing smartwatches is, of course, input. So you have a connected device that is able to show you notifications and information about what’s going on around you. Fine, but how do you input responses to interact with those notifications or information? Voice is a possibility, but it can’t be the only solution. There are simply too many situations where talking at your watch won’t be appropriate, much less expedient. Trying to put a keyboard on a watch is even more laughable.

The only solution that makes any sense to me is to have three possible responses to a notification like a text message or an email: dismiss, mark as read, and respond with a canned message. This would deal with most situations and make the watch useful beyond telling you what you already know – your phone just buzzed. If the notification is something you need to respond to later or in detail, you hit dismiss; if the notification is something you need to read, but not respond to, you hit mark as read; if the notification is something you need to respond to generically, you pick a canned response that you’ve prepared.

You might be thinking, “But I already do this with my phone. Doing that on my watch doesn’t actually help me.” You’re right; most of the time this sort of interaction won’t be helpful unless you’re in a meeting and can respond in one of the first two ways. Often times I’ll be in the middle of a conversation with someone and receive a phone call or text message. With my Pebble I’m (usually) able to tell if it’s something I need to deal with immediately or not with a quick glance to my wrist. It’s a subtle difference, but I can honestly say I’ve found it beneficial.

Another instance where I’ve found this sort of response helpful is when I’m driving. I know some of you live in states where public transportation exists and traffic is something you hear about in movies, but in southern California traffic is an integral part of life. Every day I travel for at least 40 minutes between home and work, sometimes more. Being able to quickly glance at my wrist to see what the notification is instead of changing my field of vision completely to glance at my phone is much, much safer. Again, this is subtle, but I’ve found it beneficial.

Context and Summarization

The second problem facing smartwatches is whether or not context can be used to the watch’s advantage. This is something that is still wildly underused on most smartphones. When we set up a new phone we go through the process of allowing Google and the manufacturer and the carrier to know where we are through GPS and wireless triangulation, but our phones still underuse that data. Apps like Groupon and Eye in the Sky use your location for deals and weather, but the vast majority of apps and services still don’t use this data for our advantage.

The classic example of using location data is walking into a Starbucks (or whatever coffee shop you frequent) and having your Gold Card show up for you to pay for your drink. Right now that sort of thing shows up on your phone, but it could also show up right on your watch for the barista to scan. If you have your headphones plugged in, your smartwatch could prompt you to start playing your favorite playlist. While you’re waiting for your drink to hit the bar your watch could notify you that the friend you’re scheduled to meet is about 5 minutes away. While you wait, your watch could show you your unread emails, things left on a to do list you have in Google Keep, or show you headlines from Google News.

This might sound like a lot to do on such a small screen. As a Palm Pre 2 owner, believe me when I say that you can see a lot of information on a smaller screen than you might imagine. These are all things that you could do on your phone (although some of these actions really aren’t available on phones still), but a smartwatch is uniquely positioned to be able to show you summaries of your content, notifications, and things to do in a quick way without having to jump through tons of apps. Again, this sort of summarization would be great to see in Now or even in DayDream, but I think it would be a good fit on a watch too.

Miniaturization

Like I said, I don’t think smart watches are the next big revolution in technology. Over the past few decades we’ve seen the computer go from something that takes up an entire room to something that fits in your pocket. While we may see it get miniaturized to the size of a watch, it will be forced to have limited capabilities because limited size limits utility. I hope we’ll see innovation in that space that doesn’t involve imaginary projected keyboards, but until then smartwatches will have minimal applications outside of time, notifications, displaying directions while driving, and summarizing information.

The Potential in Smartwatches [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

When Google purchased Android, their goal was to fight Microsoft and topple Windows Mobile’s dominance. Instead, Google has found itself fighting off Apple as companies like Palm (now HP), RIM (now Blackberry), and Microsoft fell by the wayside. Instead of asking for a licensing fee from OEMs, Google decided to make Android free to use. Little did Google know, Apple would make a huge play in the mobile space that would forever change the market. Back in 2008, Samsung was nothing in the mobile space. It wasn’t until 2010 when Samsung released the Galaxy S worldwide that the Korean company began to find success in the market. Flash forward to today and the company claims about 40% of the worldwide smartphone market. In many ways, Samsung is the hero in Android’s war against iOS.

The Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati is claiming that Google is becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of Samsung demanding more money from Google because of Samsung’s unrivaled dominance in the market as an Android OEM. Efrati also speculates that Samsung could use its market share to leverage getting access to the newest version of Android regardless of if it is the Nexus partner, putting other OEMs at a severe disadvantage. While Efrati doesn’t come out and say it, the threat of Samsung leaving Google hangs over his article. If Samsung demands more money and Google refuses, Samsung could fork Android, leaving Google to fend for itself with a myriad of relatively unsuccessful manufacturers. If Google agrees to give Samsung more of a share in revenues from mobile advertising, other OEMs could respond to their favoritism by forking Android or focusing only on Windows Phone.

To preemptively deal with the situation, Google is allegedly working with Android OEMs, especially Motorola, to keep Samsung in check. Efrati’s sources alleged that Rubin heralded Motorola as an insurance policy against a manufacturer like Samsung gaining too much traction in the market. The irony, of course, is that Google likely bought Motorola to ensure that the company wouldn’t use its heavy patent portfolio against other Android manufacturers.

The notion that Google could use Motorola to push back against Samsung seems comical at this point. I do not want to rule out Motorola making a comeback with some fantastic hardware, superior software, and support on all major carriers, but at this point both Motorola and Google have a lot to prove. Motorola has spent the last couple years pumping out Droid RAZR variants while Google has yet to get a Nexus devices on every carrier (much less reliably available on their own store). Should the two companies get their act together, it would be possible for them to fight back against the Korean giant, but they would be the underdog in a very dangerous game.

The reality of the situation is that if Google lost Samsung, Google would face the possibility of becoming the next Blackberry or Windows Phone. Without Samsung, Google would be a distant third in an ever-shrinking mobile market. Google would be forced to rely on Motorola, HTC, HP, LG, Sony, Huawei, ZTE, and others to fight back against Samsung. Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, HP, and others currently make up 70% of the smartphone market. 30% of the market isn’t a small piece, but none of those individual companies have been successful in the mobile space in any meaningful way. HTC has reported one terrible quarter after another, HP purchased webOS only to do nothing with it for two years while it bled talented developers, Sony has essentially no presence in the US phone market, and the other companies have little to no presence in the US thanks to concerns from American politicians about Chinese manufacturers using their Android devices to spy on Americans. Worse yet, the only other theoretical contenders that would be left to join Google to fight Samsung, Apple, and potentially Microsoft would be Nokia and Blackberry, both of which have not been especially successful in the mobile space for the past five years. In this situation, Google would probably be forced to expand the Nexus program (something that has been rumored for several months) to ensure that several OEMs have an edge on Samsung.

Of course, that doomsday situation assumes that Samsung could maintain the same dominance in the mobile space without Google’s services, including Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Play. Samsung could try to turn to Amazon for an app ecosystem and Microsoft for mail, maps, and search, but if they had the gall to leave Google then Samsung may not be quick to jump into bed with two completely separate companies to deal with more of the same negotiations. If Samsung wanted to maintain their dominance in the mobile space without Google, Microsoft, or Amazon, they would be forced to make or expand a separate app market, content store, mapping application and database, all while continuing to be dependent on Google for the base of their operating system.

Because of all those obstacles, Samsung would be much, much more likely to stick it out with Google or turn to Microsoft and Amazon. Microsoft might jump at the possibility of having its services running on a much larger sample of the market at Samsung’s price and Amazon (whose two goals seem to be to make as little money as possible and never announce sales numbers) would probably give Samsung access to their Appstore as long as Samsung used their music and video services. Samsung is undoubtedly talking with both Microsoft and Amazon about these possibilities should they determine that Google is more of a burden than a blessing.

Either of those solutions comes with a huge caveat, however: Samsung’s users have paid into Google Play for apps and content. To encourage users to stick with Samsung devices, Samsung would have to ensure that the majority of apps that their users use were in their/Amazon’s app store and possibly offer refunds for apps that users paid Google for. These issues could be surmounted, but they would be a PR nightmare and Samsung would undoubtedly lose market share in the process.

The crux of the issue centers around whether or not Google and Samsung’s relationship will fall into disrepair. Both companies have a ton of money at stake without each other. Samsung isn’t necessarily in the wrong to ask more of Google, but it’s not like Samsung had done well for itself with its Omnia line of Windows Mobile phones. It wasn’t until Google started giving away Android that Samsung was able to become the monster in mobile that it is today.

Regardless of if you see Google as being stingy towards Samsung or Samsung as ungrateful, the reality of the situation is that Samsung has been working hard at ensuring that they can leave Google if they need to. Samsung has continued to not only change how Android looks and works on their devices, but it has also continued to push its own versions of products and services that compete with Google’s, including S Voice, Samsung Wallet, ChatOn, Media Hub, and Samsung Apps. Google has every right to be concerned about Samsung, but I think Google has more to lose than Samsung does. Google may not owe Samsung anything, but Google cannot afford to lose Samsung just yet. The most likely result of the tension between the two companies is that Google will give Samsung more of a share of its mobile advertising revenue while investing heavily in Motorola and others to lessen Samsung’s dominance.

The irony of the situation is surely not lost on Google’s executives; such a move would be appeasing the war-hero-turned-enemy. Samsung may not be Google’s enemy now, but the threat of Samsung being able to leave Google is a threat that Google needs to be able to respond to. The question is, will Google and its OEMs be able to diminish Samsung’s market share without alienating the company that is making Android succeed?

The Samsung Problem [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

Designing Android apps can be a monstrous challenge. Between multiple screen sizes, resolutions, Android versions, and manufacturer skins, developers have enough variables to make it nearly impossible to make an app that both looks like it fits the design language of your phone and is enjoyable to use on the devices you own. While Google has taken steps to try and guide developers in the right direction to solve these problems, many Android apps still are not optimized for modern devices, especially tablets. Worse still, Android apps have historically been static and boring. Many Android apps still have the old Android 2.x or below design, which forces users to peck around the app to access content.

Twitter apps have been especially representative of the need to have adaptable, scalable, and natural design. In particular, the official Twitter app for Android has been derided by users, journalists, and Apple executives as an example of an app that does not scale up to higher resolutions and larger screen sizes. Through the lens of Twitter apps for Android one can see how Android app design has had to evolve since 2008, pushing Android to become a more fluid, scalable, and fun to use platform.

In my opinion, the first truly revolutionary app for Twitter was TweetDeck. TweetDeck was one of the first (if not the first) Twitter apps to use swiping between panes as a way to navigate between your timeline, mentions, and direct messages. It didn’t have features like location, muting, or streaming, but it presented Twitter in a simple, easy-to-use package. If this sounds mundane to you, then you may not remember what Twitter’s first official app on Android looked like. Most Twitter apps did not adopt a swiping pane UI, instead opting to use a button-based UI. Seesmic placed the buttons for timeline, mentions, and DMs on the top while Twidroyd placed them on the bottom. Designs like these were simple, functional, and banal, but they couldn’t anticipate the shift that was about to happen in the phone space.

Starting around 2010, Android phone screen sizes began to shift towards 4 inches and above. 2010 was the year of the Droid X, the Streak, the Evo 4G, the Galaxy S, and other phones that by today’s standards seem small (with the possible exception of the Streak), but in 2010 were considered huge. As screen sizes grew, app design became more important. Reaching for the top of your screen over and over on the Droid Incredible was easy, but it was becoming more challenging on larger screened devices.

I believe that the move towards larger screens was one of the reasons that Matias Duarte and Google’s Android team improved the design guidelines for Android apps. In an effort to avoid what Google calls “pogo-sticking,“ Android Design recommends using a swipe gesture to move between pieces of content. Google recognized that swiping gestures were a superior navigation method to on-screen buttons because screens change size and orientation.

While Twitter for iPad and iPhone have each respectively been hailed as examples of how UI should adapt between screen sizes, Google has maintained the argument that completely different UI paradigms aren’t the best solution. Responding to The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky on this very issue, Duarte said:

“One of the things that I don’t think you want to do is have a completely different experience for the phone and tablet. You could only get away with that if you were going to say that there’s [sic] only two screen sizes or two window sizes. That’s great if that really is the case, but that’s not the case for Android. There is this infinite variety of sizes. Just like on the desktop, you can stretch your windows to all these different sizes. When people are making PCs they make PCs with all sorts of different configurations and screen sizes. That is the real future of computing. That kind of variety is going to exist, so you want to have a platform that can scale that way, and developers want to start to design applications that scale that way.”

Duarte went on to ignore the Twitter example and instead point to Google’s own apps for UI solutions that scale. Google+ shows the exact same content on tablets and phones, but scrolls horizontally or verizoncally depending on device orientation. Gmail uses a paned UI that is spread out on a tablet display and stacked on a phone display. While Duarte has evangelized the “one UI fits all” approach, even Google doesn’t always follow its own rules (Chrome, for example, has a different UI for navigating content on tablets and phones). The reality is that scalable and selective UI paradigms are both needed and both work better when users aren’t forced to hunt around for buttons to interact with content.

In an interview with Gizmodo, Duarte explained, “I want to transform the types of interactions we have with computers that are today really all about hunting and pecking and picking and menus, into an experience that is a much more gestural, physical, emotional experience.” I believe we’re just beginning to see what Android apps are capable of with gestural, scalable design. Every time I pick up my Palm Pre 2 I’m reminded of how simple the UI was and how fun it is to swipe and gesture on a device to use it. I think Android is headed in that direction as a whole (just look at the new camera app or the gesture to toggle settings in the notification shade in Android 4.2) and it’s exciting territory. We’ve already seen apps like Pocket use swiping to reveal an action sheet or swipe to archive in Gmail, but I can’t wait to see what else developers can come up with when more subtlety is employed (despite its age, CyanogenMod’s lock screen gestures is a fantastic example).

Android has been a beautiful operating system that is far too often defaced by poorly designed apps. Many Android apps follow Android Design’s recommendations or have come up with their own solution, but there are still so many apps that either half-ass Android Design’s recommendations or are still using the same tired Android 2.x design templates. Apps like Falcon Pro, Tweetings, Slide Messaging, Eye in the Sky Weather, Tasks, and others demonstrate that Android users are willing to pay for quality apps that are well-designed. We are beginning to see Google and third party developers work together to build a better Android; one that is fluid, scalable, and fun to use.

Building a Better Android [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

Google Now is great at putting certain pieces of information in front of you before you realize you need it. A traffic report for your drive home is there just before you leave work. You’re notified about a package’s location after you’re emailed about it. Recent searches appear to remind you about your bad decision to try and understand what happened in the Clone Saga.

Google wants to continue to empower our cell phones and turn them into truly useful person assistants. I believe Google Now is the best way to do that, but I also believe Google Now needs to get a lot better. In particular, Now needs improve its use of contextual information, have more of a personality, and display information better. 

Context

Google is pretty good at guessing what I want to see, but it doesn’t know things I haven’t told Google about and it certainly doesn’t always know all of my contextual information. Google Now knows to show me appointment information before I need to leave to meet someone or to show me local attractions, but I’m not always trying to explore something and sometimes I want to be reminded of my schedule more in advance.

Location context can be tremendously powerful. For example, imagine when you walk in to your local coffee shop a card appears to pay with Google Wallet. After you pay, a card appears with a book recommendation from Google Play or your favorite playlist to throw on while you work on some homework. Maybe when you arrive at your parents place Google Now presents you with a card that initiates a photo slide show of the vacation you took last week. Maybe when you arrive at work or school it provides a card for your schedule for the rest of your day so you know what to expect as you walk in.

One context that Google can’t anticipate is my conversation (unless you opt in to let Google Now listen to everything you say). I might have just finished a meeting and want to add another appointment to my calendar. With Apple’s Siri I can tell her to add an appointment to my calendar on the drive home, but Google Now is severely limited in the voice input it can receive. For example with Google Now I can initiate a phone call or a text message, but there is no audible feedback and with a text message I’m then prompted to use a keyboard. Siri, on the other hand, requires voice input and can do nothing with text. Google Now has fantastic voice recognition (unlike Siri’s “voice recognition,” which I believe Apple borrowed from Google Voice), but it’s really only good for initiating tasks, not completing them. Google would be wise to allow users to ask Now questions regarding their personal information (like calendar information) and complete tasks with their voice.

Personality

Google has a lot of personality. From Google Doodles to April Fools’ Day, Google regularly shows off its sense of humor. Google Now makes no effort to feel human. Siri, on the other hand, tells jokes, sings songs, delights in tales of robots dominating humanity, and breaks the fourth wall like your favorite merc with a mouth. As a result, Siri really does feel like a personal assistant with personality and quirks.

Adding little bits of personality throughout Now that aren’t user initiated would also make Now feel even more responsive and human. Granted, Siri was presented from the ground up as a personal assistant, but it wouldn’t take much to build a persona around Now. Siri tells you a joke when you ask her, but imagine Now pulling up a grumpy cat meme when you do a search for something cat related.

Adding personality to Google Now wouldn’t add a lot of functionality, but it would encourage users to play with the app more and feel more connected with the service. I love the idea of Now messing with people on April Fools’ Day with a light-hearted prank, giving a sarcastic response before following a command, or responding conversationally. I also love the idea of the Now app having sliders to choose how sarcastic or biting Now can be in response to you (just in case you’re a bit more sensitive or don’t like the idea of robots talking back to you).

Layout

Google Now is easy to launch from the lock screen of a stock device, but from your home screen it is less obvious. Tapping on the search bar at the top of the screen is fine, but it implies searching, now Now.  I think leaving Google Now as a replacement for the Google Search app makes it feel foreign to Android even though Google Now only appears on the mobile operating system. I think Google should borrow a design cue from Motorola and integrate Google Now into the home screen. A swipe to the right from your main screen should throw you into Google Now.

In addition to home screen integration, I think Google could do a better job at showing more information in Now. As I mentioned in my Windows Phone 8 review, in a lot of ways Live Tiles feel like Google Now. I don’t think Google should adopt the Live Tiles UI, but I do think they could present cards better.

Scrolling through cards is nice, but at first you can only see one and a quarter cards. I’m assuming Google did that to encourage users to scroll through Google Now, but from a UX perspective it makes Google Now far less powerful. Cards could be folded and then unfolded with a tap to show more or less information without dismissing it, flipped to show more information, or even stacked together (to borrow an idea from webOS).

The Beginning of Now

Google Now is really powerful and super useful, but Google definitely hasn’t tapped into its full potential. Once you get past the initial creepy feeling when Google predicts the information you want without asking for it, Now feels amazing. It has the potential to blow assistants like Siri out of the water because it does what any good assistant should: do things without you having to say so. I can’t wait to see what Google does to build out Now as a platform that can be integrated into smart watches, Google Glass, smart cars, refrigerators, mirrors, and so much more. This is just the beginning of Now.

Improving Google Now [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

In the past few months it has become abundantly clear that Google intends to support three platforms: the web, Android, and iOS. Google’s support for the web and Android should not come as a surprise; Google has always been a web company and Google bought Android to fight Microsoft in the mobile space. Even Google’s support of iOS is not all that surprising since the iPhone was essentially the Google phone before the G1. What is surprising, however, is that Google isn’t just making apps for iOS; they’re making really good apps for iOS.

Google has more than enough apps in the App Store to fill a whole page on an iOS device (23 total). While some of these apps are garbage and others are merely remnants of failed Google projects, Google has come out swinging lately with seven apps in particular: Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Chrome, and Google+. All of these apps are available on both iOS and Android in near identical implementations (the only real difference between the Android and iOS versions of these apps is that pull to refresh is available on the iOS iterations while the Android apps still rely on a refresh button) save Gmail and Maps.

Google’s Gmail and Maps Android apps tend to focus on utility over appearance while the iOS apps tend to hide functionality, thereby presenting a cleaner user interface. While Google Maps for iOS looks and feels inspired by the Android app, the cleaner interface is far more inviting to use. While the iOS app emphasizes search and location, the Android app emphasizes utility in general.

Doing things like a search or finding your location are easy to do on both apps, but something like adjusting layers is far less obvious on the iOS app. In fact, settings are essentially hidden on the iOS app. In the iOS app Google chose to hide traffic, public transit, and a link to Google Earth (which is a rather strange inclusion) behind an Android style menu button. The implication here is that iOS users expect a clean interface while Android users expect a heavy amount of mapping tools available as soon as the app launches.

Gmail is probably the most surprising iOS app from Google. The iOS app again brandishes a cleaner UI while the Android app emphasizes utility at the expense of beauty. In fact, with its white expanses and red highlights, the iOS app is actually more faithful to the design of Gmail in a browser than the Android app.

Both apps have multi-user support, swipe to archive, label support, mute, and neither app can create a label (still!). In every screen the iOS app hides settings and options behind buttons while the Android app shoves them in front of users. Because of these UI decisions, the Android app places a very, very heavy learning curve on users in terms of learning the Gmail app’s unique iconography while the iOS app labels everything except for archive and trash. As a result, the iOS app has a much cleaner, if less immediately useful user interface.

In my testing, I actually found Gmail, Maps, Google+ and Chrome for iOS to be more of a pleasure to use than their Android counterparts, which is a strange thing to say. Usually companies put their best work on their own apps for their own platform (see Hotmail for Android), but Google’s apps are actually in parity with the Android versions or better on iOS. Between pull to refresh, the use of playful, colorful loading animations, and the simpler UI, Google apps on iOS tended to be more responsive and easier to use. If you want to live in Google’s ecosystem Android is no longer a requirement.

While I understand why Google would want to make good apps for iOS, I don’t understand why they would make better designed apps for iOS. Maybe Google believes that Android users want UI controls exposed and iOS users want them hidden or that Android users don’t mind cluttered UIs as much as iOS users. Those are just guesses; if I were Google I would want to make sure that the Android apps performed just as well and included little touches like pull to refresh and loading animations. That kind of attention to detail can make a tremendous difference in how an app works and feels. No matter what the reason is for the discrepency, it is nice to see some really nice design coming from Mountain View. Hopefully we see Google bring some of that finess and focus to their Android apps.

Google Apps on iOS and Android [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

For the past week I’ve been spending a lot of time with the HTC 8X on Verizon. The 8X is considered a signature Windows Phone, sporting a 4.3″ 720×1280 display, a 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal storage, NFC, dual band WiFi, LTE, Beats Audio, and an 8 MP 1080p shooter in back with a wide-angle 2.1 MP front camera. In short, Windows Phone has reached parity with Android and iOS in terms of specs.

When I last looked at Windows Phone I argued that while the operating system looks good and is certainly an improvement over Windows Mobile, the lack of apps, disappointing multi-tasking, and poor notification system kept Windows Phone from reaching feature parity with iOS and Android. Since then Android and iOS have propelled smartphone ownership to unprecedented levels while Windows Phone has remained a niche product in terms of market share. Read on to find out how Microsoft has changed Windows Phone for the better, what has stayed the same, and what Microsoft still needs to do to make Windows Phone succeed.

Software Design

Windows Phone 7 reinvented the design style that Microsoft began to push with Windows Media Center and the Zune by adding a more visual layer to a text-heavy user interface. The focus on text over images to represent UI has been slightly diminished in Windows Phone 8 with the option to shrink Live tiles down to just icons. That said, Windows Phone provides a nice balance between emphasizing text and icons at the same time.

Whether you like the stylistic choices or not, Microsoft has made an operating system that looks and feels consistent. Metro is not altogether different from the latest design choices being made by Google with Google Now, Gmail for iOS, and Google+. In fact, in many ways Windows Phone feels like what Google Now would be if it were a full operating system.

The Start screen is constantly flashing updated information in front of you in just about the right bites for you to chew. Everything looks clean and organized if not abrasively simple. Compared to the hyper-realistic design language found in iOS, Windows Phone 8 feels like a breath of fresh air even though it has essentially remained unchanged since Windows Phone launched back in 2010.

While the simplicity of Windows Phone sometimes works against its functionality, it presents a unique way to interact with the various sources of information in your life. Apps consolidate information across horizontal sections, encouraging you to explore the space. Large fonts summarize different sections of an app while icons flank the bottom portion of the screen. Again, this is not always the most functional method to display information, but it certainly makes Windows Phone stand out from the crowd. People who are looking for something that is simple but keeps them connected should find Windows Phone’s design appealing.

Start Screen

The updated Start screen was heralded by Microsoft as major improvement over the old Start screen. Microsoft is right that it is a major improvement, but it really should have been there from the beginning. In Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 you could rearrange the tiles on the Start screen, pin them and unpin them, but their size was decided by the app, not the user.

Microsoft is now giving users the ability to change the size of live tiles. This may seem like a minor change, but it’s an important one. On Windows Phone 7.x, the most amount of tiles you could see immediately after unlocking your screen was 8, whereas with Windows Phone 8 you could potentially see 28 live tiles upon unlocking your screen. This means that users can prioritize more apps towards the top of their Start screen.

The Start screen, while not tremendously different from the last iteration of Windows Phone, is far more useful now. That said, live tiles do not provide the same kind of customization or functionality as widgets. While widgets are not the superlative expression of functionality and productivity, they are often more useful than live tiles. For example, a Twitter widget can show you multiple mentions while a live tile only shows a preview of one notification (yes, you still often cannot see the full text of a notification from the live tiles).

The Start screen excels at giving users quick glances at information, but it still feels somewhat hampered by design choices that Microsoft made early on. Adjusting the size of live tiles in Windows Phone gives users the option to see more information, but Microsoft should have come up with a way to see more information on smaller live tiles. The smallest, icon sized icons will obviously be severely limited, but the medium sized icons that most apps default to could use some sort of scrolling mechanism to see more information from the Start screen. If the users wants to see everything they can always open the app, but being able to swipe through email headings or read more of a tweet than the first few words would make the Start screen far more useful.

Notifications

Notifications in general have remained completely unchanged since Windows Phone 7.5. If the screen is unlocked and an app received an update, you will see a toast notification at the top of the screen. Tap it and the respective app will launch and show you the update or swipe the update to the right to dismiss it (something iOS users are surely envious of).

On the lock screen there have been some improvements. For example, you can choose between the Calendar, Facebook, Twitter, Email, Messaging, and Phone apps to display detailed information on the lock screen with quick status notifications on the lock screen from the same group of apps. You may only chose one of those apps for the detailed notification and you can chose five of the remaining apps for quick status notifications on the lock screen. As far as I can tell developers do not have the option to tie their apps into detailed or quick status, which means the only way to see notifications if they occurred when you weren’t looking at your phone is to pin the app to the Start screen.

While some might say that pinned apps to the Start screen is just as good if not better than a full notification hub, I disagree. The Start screen is where I want to pin the apps that I used most. That is the screen that I will look at the most. While it is nice to have quick access to information from my most important apps, I don’t want the Start screen to double as a notification hub.

Notifications are a crucial part of a modern operating system. An operating system that is allegedly designed to let you get in, get out and get on with your life should have a clean, simple notification hub so users can actually see what is going on all in one place. Considering Microsoft’s emphasis on other information hubs, this omission is glaring. It would make a lot of sense for Microsoft to add a notification hub that is accessible from the Start screen by swiping to the right instead of forcing users to pin any app to their Start screen that might receive a notification. While it is nice that users can shrink down the tiles so they do not have to scroll through a huge Start screen to manually search for notifications, that is not a good solution for power users.

Multitasking

Multitasking has also remained largely unchanged. While you can now go back up to seven apps, the behavior is still inconsistent. Some apps are able to resume quickly while others are not. It is also still possible to have two instances of the same app appear in the severely limited multitasking screen. I did have some issue with the Settings app disappearing from the multitasking screen from time to time. I’m not sure if that was supposed to be a feature or if it’s a bug, but it was annoying. Multitasking is supposed to bring some consistency to your app experience, but Windows Phone does nothing of the sort.

While the multitasking screen looks nice (HTC Sense’s version of multitasking looks very similar), it would be even better if you could swipe apps away to close them. When Microsoft first revealed its iteration of multitasking on Windows Phone (yes, it actually launched without multitasking) many drew comparisons to webOS, but unlike webOS (and Android as of Ice Cream Sandwich) the multitasking screen is just to switch apps, not the manage them.

In theory, to close an app you simply relaunch it from the Start screen. Some apps like Rowi resume where you were when you launch them from the Start screen, but most apps launch a fresh instance if they are accessed from the Start screen. This sort of behavior should have been changed in Windows Phone 8. Android, iOS, and even webOS resume your session in an app when it is launched from your home screen or the app launcher. Microsoft should have just went all the way and stolen webOS’ card interface to mange apps.

Apps

Despite Microsoft’s efforts to coerce more developers to write apps for Windows Phone, the app ecosystem has not changed dramatically since Windows Phone 7.5 and the end of the smartphone beta test. Big name apps like Instagram, Tumblr, Pocket, Starbucks, Pandora (coming in 2013), Flipboard, Dropbox, Hulu, and YouTube are still missing. Sure, there are often third party apps that you can use to replace or use these services, but the fact that these kinds of apps are still missing is a huge problem.

To complicate things more, since many of these apps are unavailable in an official form, users are often forced to pay for apps that allow you to use the services instead of the free versions that would come from most of these companies. On top of that, many of the paid third party apps do not work well. There are certainly exceptions (BoxFiles for Dropbox, SBUX Card, YouTube Browser, Blueprints, etc.), but the experience is frustrating to say the least.

On a brighter note, the Microsoft has cleaned up the Windows Phone Store (formerly the Windows Phone Marketplace) so that searches bring up relevant apps. This was a huge problem back when I looked at Windows Phone 7.5, but thankfully a search for Twitter brings up Twitter apps first, then random apps that mention Twitter. Browsing through app sections like Top free and Picks for you also seem improved, offering better suggestions and a more curated experience.

While Microsoft has done a good job at bringing in a lot more big name apps and cleaning up the Store, it still has a lot of work ahead of it. With Google removing Exchange support for Gmail and refusing to make apps for Windows Phone, Microsoft is going to have to push harder to increase adoption. There are certainly plenty of great apps out there, but omissions like Instagram, Tumblr, and Pocket really do hurt Windows Phone’s image, and therefore their chances to succeed in the market.

Games

The game ecosystem has improved slightly since I used Windows Phone 7.5. There are more popular titles and a few more clones of popular titles from Android and iOS. Games are still hidden in the Games app instead of showing up with the rest of your apps. I’m not sure what Microsoft is trying to accomplish by siloing gaming apps into the Games hub, but it would be nice if there were at least an option to have games show up with the rest of your apps.

The improved hardware requirements for Windows Phone could encourage developers of heavier games to develop for Windows Phone, but games like Dead Space or Marvel vs Capcom 2 are still missing. In their place are a number of simpler games from Wordament by Microsoft to Angry Birds Star Wars to Sonic CD. While the games that I played performed well and I didn’t see any issues with games not resuming properly in my testing, the lack of titles was annoying.

The dearth of gaming titles on the mobile platform of a company that has its own console is embarrassing. The fact that there still isn’t a Halo FPS or even side scroller is maddening. Microsoft is literally leaving money on the table by making franchises like Halo console-only. I would be happier with the Windows Phone gaming options if I could at least get a decent number of classic Sega titles, but Sega only has four games available on Windows Phone (Sonic CD, Sonic 4 Episode I, Super Monkey Ball, and Super Monkey Ball 2). Had Microsoft reached deeper into their pockets, they may have been able to coerce Sega to release some exclusive titles to Windows Phone or at least to match their huge library on iOS. When a flailing company like Sega only has four games on your operating system, you know you’re in bad shape.

Camera

The camera software on Windows Phone 8 has received a number of improvements. In previous version of Windows Phone the camera had a video toggle on the top, a +/- toggle to zoom, and a settings button that opened the full settings pane. While it was a nice, minimalist look, it emphasized digital zooming a little too much considering any amount of digital zoom alone tends to distort an image noticeably.

Windows Phone 8 keeps the minimal design, but puts more useful features on the left of the display. Three dots mark the top of the right panel to drag out the full settings pane (which is much more consistent with the rest of Windows Phone’s behavior than Windows Phone 7.x’s version) followed by the video toggle, the front camera toggle, the flash toggle, and the lens toggle. Sliding out the Settings pane prompts you to chose between altering video and photo settings.

Photo settings in Windows Phone 7.x were rather minimal with a few unhelpful scenes to choose from, some effects, resolution options, metering mode, and flicker adjustment. In short, there was not a lot of emphasis placed on allowing the user to control the camera. Windows Phone 8, on the other hand, offers some of the same effects and resolution options, but adds white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpness, and ISO controls as well as the option to enable or disable face detection. While you obviously still dont’ have the kind of manual control you would expect from a full fledged camera, there are a lot more options available to enable you to take better shots.

One other neat feature in Windows Phone 8 is the ability to add third party lenses. Bing Vision (which is a barcode/QR code reader) comes built in, but other lenses are available in the Windows Phone Store. One free option, CamWow has a number of filters that can be live previewed and used to take goofy shots with swirling or pinhole or more serious shots with a black and white filter or stencil lens. While many of these are built into Windows Phone, the option to have third party developers build lenses that can be used straight from the camera app is great.

Maps

The maps experience will differ from device to device. On the 8X I had the built-in Maps app which is designed by Microsoft, but powered by Nokia Maps (much like the Maps app on iOS 5 and before was designed by Apple, but powered by Google Maps). On Nokia devices you will have their Nokia maps app as well as access to Nokia Drive, a voice navigation app with turn-by-turn directions. While Nokia drive will eventually be available to other devices, right now it is a Nokia exclusive, leaving the 8X with the VZ Navigator app (which appropriately is currently rated 2 out of 5 stars).

Overall the design of the Maps app is identical to before. You have access to an arial view (satellite), turn by turn directions, local scout for points of interest, and traffic conditions. Once nice little addition to the Maps app in Windows Phone 8 is the option to display WiFi hotspots. While that sort of information is not super relevant for most consumers, it’s a nice addition.

When getting directions in Windows Phone 7, tapping on each section of the directions would change the visual map and read out loud what the next step was. While tapping to see the next step is still enabled, voice over is gone in Windows Phone 8. This is undoubtedly in preparation for Nokia Drive to be made available to all Windows Phones, but in the mean time it means that non-Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices are actually better for navigation than non-Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices. It would have been nice to see Microsoft at least leave the old functionality in the app until Nokia Drive was released instead of abandoning users to VZ Navigator.

Overall the maps were accurate in my usage, but far less useful than Google Maps. In fact, I would prefer Apple Maps to the mapping solution provided with the HTC 8X. While Microsoft has touted Local Scout to find points of interest near your location, that data is not present by default when browsing through maps. Points of interest can be shown by tapping on Local Scout or initiating a search, but I had issues with some locations missing. In particular, my favorite Starbucks in my home town is missing altogether in Nokia Maps (it is accurately presented in Google Maps and on the wrong side of the street in Apple Maps). While Apple Maps is often derided for misinformation, I could have still seen the Starbucks from the street with Apple Maps; Nokia Maps doesn’t even acknowledge its existence.

Office

Microsoft Office has remained useful if you use SkyDrive, but not very useful otherwise. You can still create and sync Excel sheets and Word documents. You cannot make a PowerPoint presentation on your phone, but they will open and you can make some small edits. OneNote has its own app which does a good job syncing between the full desktop application. In fact, if you’re a student who relies on OneNote, the Windows Phone application is really nice.

For whatever reason Microsoft continues to tout Office as a huge advantage for Windows Phone users, but the reality of the situation is that Office for Windows Phone is only marginally better than Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on OS X. To make matters worse, Google offers Drive for free on Android and iOS with even more functionality than Office. Even Apple’s Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, which are $10 each, blow Office for Windows Phone out of the water. This says nothing of the other full productivity suites available on Android and iOS like Documents to Go and QuickOffice.

Most people are probably not using their phones to make major changes to documents, but at least on Android and iOS you have the power to do so. Sure, on a Windows 8 device you have the option to have the full Office experience, but it still isn’t really optimized for touch and it doesn’t deal with mobile emergency: having to make a major change to a document and not being able to on a Windows Phone. Considering how much Microsoft is pushing Office as a competitive advantage over Android and iOS, I would have hoped that they would have improved the Office experience instead of making it feel like a free trial.

Email, Calendar, Contacts

The email, calendar, and contacts experience remains relatively unchanged. Despite a larger, higher resolution display, the 8X still only displayed my most recent 5 emails (the same as my Trophy running Windows Phone 7.5). Apparently Microsoft employees don’t use email that often and think that 5 is an appropriate number of emails to display. Most of the display is taken up with giant text for each sender. The design is reflected in Outlook 2013 as well with giant text for the sender and regular sized text for the email preview (something I was able to disable in Outlook 2013, but not in Windows Phone 8). For casual users that might be fine, but for a business user (which should theoretically be a huge demographic for Microsoft), they want to be able to see as much information as possible.

Once you open an email you’re greeted with a large avatar for that user (provided you have an image in your contacts for that person), their name in giant text yet again, the subject in blue, regular sized text, followed by the metadata for the email and then the email’s actual text. Emails sent in HTML are squished to fit into the size of the display, which often means that portions of the email may be cut off or formatted incorrectly. Pinch-to-zoom is enabled, but it does not solve the problem of emails displaying incorrectly. Even turning the phone to landscape does not resolve the issue. This is an issue that has persisted since Windows Phone 7 and is yet another area that Microsoft, the company behind Exchange and Outlook, absolutely should have resolved before.

The Calendar app is a nightmare. It defaults to a day view, where you can scroll through each hour of the day to see what is going on today. A swipe to the left shows your whole agenda (which is actually useful) and another shows you your To-Do list. There is no week view. You can switch to a month view, which uses a .5 size font to let you know that something might be happening on a certain day, but in order to view anything you have to press on that day, leaving the month view.

This isn’t all that different from the stock Android calendar app, although at least there you have some semblance of a week view. Samsung’s calendar app on the Galaxy S III, while ugly, replicates the functionality of the calendar app in iOS, which gives you a month view in which you can select a date and see the day’s events all in the same view. There are third party apps in the Store (Live Calendar and Calendar[+] are both good options) that provide this functionality to make the calendar app more useful, but the built in app is essentially only good for its agenda view.

The People hub is essentially unchanged from before in terms of managing and browsing contacts. For casual social network users this has the potential to keep you posted on what your close friends are up to if they use Facebook and Twitter regularly. The idea is that it can be a one stop app to show you the important things going on in your friends and family’s lives. In my own practice I found it was easier to keep up in third party apps than to rely on the People hub, but again, this is clearly designed for casual social networkers.

One neat new feature for a group of friends or a family with Windows Phone is Rooms. Rooms is a new feature in the People hub that allows you to communicate with a group of people through chat, a shared calendar, photos, and notes. The app is clearly tailored towards families (the examples given are overtly family related), but it could be useful for other groups of people to stay in touch (like classmates working on a project together). While business users will probably still rely on Exchange, I can see where this sort of funcationality would be really beneficial for a family of Windows Phone users to keep track of everyone’s schedule.

Conclusions

Microsoft has taken some important steps towards creating a competitive operating system, but they are still far from reaching parity with Android and iOS. The lack of apps, subpar multitasking, and abysmal notification system are three major issues that Windows Phone has faced since its launch. The app situation is improving, but I wouldn’t call it hopeful. Huge parts of the operating system feel like they were designed for Windows 8 on a desktop because they require so much visual area, which leads to little content and lots of blank space (which is also an issue in many native Windows 8 apps).

Windows Phone feels like a suped up feature phone with full access to the web and a few apps. For users who are loosely connected to others through social networks, want a decent camera, and don’t play a lot of games on their phone, Windows Phone could be a great solution. For most people, however, Windows Phone is simply too different from the competition. It’s not that people won’t appreciate the look and feel of Windows Phone (in fact I think most people would enjoy it), but rather that Windows Phone behaves irrationally compared to industry standard UI paradigms and lacks important apps.

Like I said the last time I reviewed Windows Phone, I would love for a third operating system to truly compete with Android and iOS, but Windows Phone simply is not that operating system right now. Microsoft may have incredibly deep pockets to keep investing into Windows Phone, but the longer it takes for them to reach parity, the more users are choosing different ecosystems. As it becomes increasingly more difficult to leave an ecosystem and as we continue our march towards smartphone ubiquity, Microsoft is going to have a much harder time penetrating the market in any significant way.

When trying to enter an established market there is a temptation to do something totally different, but making something too different means having to retrain users. The shift from a command-line interface to a graphic user interface meant having to retrain users how to use computers. Smartphones required a similar retraining, with iOS setting the ground work and Android following along shortly thereafter. While there are important differences between Android and iOS, both follow the same basic UI patterns and ideas. Microsoft elected to take a radically different path which enabled them to stand out from the pack, but it also created a larger barrier to entry than iOS or Android present to the average user. If Windows 8 tablets take the tablet market by storm then Windows Phone will undoubtedly feel more natural to more users, but until then it faces an uphill battle in reeducating users how to use a smartphone.

It is discouraging that after two years of trying Microsoft still has yet to really break into the market, but the reality is that Microsoft has not put in the work it needs to in order to make Windows Phone a success. Microsoft is going to have to work much, much harder if they want to push themselves into an already crowded market. Perhaps by the launch of Windows Phone 9 Microsoft will finally have a competitive operating system.

Review: Windows Phone 8, a Look at the Competition is a post from: Droid Life

Instagram’s move to no longer support Twitter cards was not an act of war. More importantly, according to Instagram’s CEO, it was not a move influenced by Instagram’s new owner, Facebook. You can choose to buy into the hype that Instagram is fighting against Twitter so that Facebook will win a numbers war it has already won, or you can consider what Instagram is accomplishing by doing this.

Instagram is doing two things with this move: showing users the image’s metadata and giving users the opportunity to respond immediately to an image. Think about what happens when you see an Instagram picture show up in your Twitter feed. It used to be that you would see the image in your feed and nothing else. Before the change, if you used the official Twitter app you could only see the image without any indication of how many likes the image had or any comments about the image. If someone had a long title or description of the image then you often could not see the whole thing on Twitter, forcing you to open the Instagram app.

If you were friends with that person and you wanted to leave a comment or like the photo, it makes sense to do that on Instagram where it was posted, not on Twitter. Posting a response on Twitter to something originally shared from another social network breaks it away from the rest of the conversation. With the new changes, if you want to respond on Twitter (or whatever social network you’re seeing the image on), you still can, but if you want to respond on Instagram you’ll be pushed to the site with all of the image’s metadata and comment on or like the picture (assuming you’re logged in).

This move is huge for Instagram users. While Instagram.com is still a rather crippled site on the desktop side of things, when viewing a specific image it gives you all the functionality of the app without having to jump into it from Twitter. You just press (or click) the link and you’re able to respond to that image immediately.

This move was not a declaration of war by Instagram; it was a move that vastly improves the Instagram experience from within Twitter. If anything, this encourages people to continue posting photos to Twitter because they know that people will be able to respond to them more quickly than forcing people to leave what they were doing in Twitter to go respond in Instagram.

Twitter’s move to add filters is almost certainly a move to keep Twitter relevant in this boom for photo sharing on mobile devices. Twitter has never been the place to post photos. In fact, Twitter was fairly late to the game with their own photo hosting solution. Regardless of Twitter’s addition of photo filters (which has been rumored for months and could not possibly be a response to Instagram’s removal of support for Twitter Cards), Instagram is not at war with Twitter. They are not directly competing services at this point in time.

Twitter is a social network primarily designed around publishing text. They are moving towards supporting more and more types of media through Twitter Cards as they march towards becoming a broadcast network instead of a social network, but they are not really in the same space as Instagram. All this hype about war between Instagram and Twitter may be true from Twitter’s side, but all Instagram is trying to do is improve their users’ experience.

Instagram is Not at War with Twitter [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

Last night on the DL Show I mentioned a weather app called Eye in Sky Weather. Read on to see what makes this app good enough to be on two of my home screens.

Eye in the Sky Weather (ESW) doesn’t have any standout features that you haven’t seen in a weather app before, but it does combine a lot of them into a beautiful, holo-themed package. For instance, ESW has the option for a persistent weather notification. When your notification shade is retracted you will see the current temperature in your notification bar in a brightened holo blue, but upon opening your notification shade you’ll see the temperature, weather conditions, cloud conditions, and how it feels outside next to a customizable icon that represents current conditions.

When you open the app itself you’ll see the same information you found in the notification shade, but larger and including wind and humidity conditions. At the bottom of the main screen you’ll see a truncated forecast for the current day and the three following with high and low temperature and a a summary of weather conditions for that day (for example, I can expect some sprinkling on Saturday morning and some rain Sunday evening). A swipe to the right shows me the 48 hour forecast. The 48 Hours tab shows what to expect over the next two days in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night in terms of temperature, cloud coverage, and precipitation.

A swipe to the left from the main screen shows the next two weeks of weather. This is an example of a way in which the app shines. A lot of apps show the next few days or the next week, byt ESW shows the next two weeks so you can really plan ahead if you need to. Obviously the further you look into the future the less accurate the weather information is, but if you’re planning a vacation for two weeks and you want to have an educated guess, this app gives it to you. The 15 day (it includes the current day) tab shows the highs and lows for each day as well as the chance of rain.

What Android app would be complete without a little bit of customization options? Eye in the Sky Weather doesn’t leave you hanging. Aside from the option to add as many cities as you want to toggle between, ESW lets you choose between Fahrenheit and Celsius for temperature, kilometers per hour, miles per hour, meters per second, and knots for wind speed, and centimeters, millimeters, and inches for rain or snow measurement. ESW also has twelve different icon sets that you can choose between for in the app, on a widget, and in your notification bar (yes, you can have three different icon sets for each item). The twelve icon sets mostly follow a metro or holo like design language with some coming in monochrome, some in light colors, some in more descriptive colors, and one (realistic) in extreme color and detail. Every icon set looks great and scales well across the different sizes.

ESW comes with four different widget options. The first is Cities, seen above, which shows you the weather for the next few days in every city you have added to the map. To toggle between cities, simply press the arrow button on either side of the widget. Next is Forecast, which is a 4×1 widget showing the forecast for the next five days. The icon widget does what every iPhone owner wishes their weather app could do – show the current temperature and conditions in the icon for the app. Finally, Temperature is an icon sized circle that simply tells you the current temperature. All of these widgets come with optional refresh and edit buttons on the widget, text color options, background color options (including transparency), and location options.

Eye in the Sky Weather has taken over my homescreen. It is my app of choice for accurate weather information not only because it gives me everything I need in a weather app, but because the design is beautiful and customizable to my liking. Android has a history of having apps that are great at giving you information, but lacking in the design department. Eye in the Sky Weather gives accurate information in a gorgeous package. Instead of making all of the design choices for you, the developer, Tim Clark, provides beautiful icon choices to let you have the look that you want.

Eye in the Sky Weather is a free, ad-supported app in the Google Play Store. For $1.91 you can remove the ads. The app is universal so it will work on both phones and tablets and Clark promises a 7-inch version is coming soon. Download Eye in the Sky Weather here.

Review: Eye in Sky Weather for Android is a post from: Droid Life

Lately I have been trying to be more conscious of the reasons behind why I post something on a social network. As I near 19,000 tweets I am keenly aware that I share my thoughts more than most people. I am certainly not anywhere near having the most tweets, but as I have participated in social networks like MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Path, Instagram, and others over the past few years I have adjusted how much I share and how I share it.

When I joined MySpace (somewhere around 2005-2006) it was designed as a simple way to share information about yourself, blog, listen to music, and share photos. I often blogged about my life on MySpace, but it was much more about who you are than what was happening in your life right now. Facebook changed that by implementing a status update. MySpace had a similar feature (share your mood), but Facebook made it the center. I think most people migrated from MySpace to Facebook (a migration that has never been replicated from Facebook to elsewhere despite Google’s best efforts) because Facebook encouraged you to share about now, while MySpace was more like your own website.

Since Facebook has risen in popularity we’ve seen services like Twitter and Instagram rise up as simplified versions of the same idea: share content with others. While Facebook has become a behemoth for both text and media content sharing, services like Twitter and App.net focus on text sharing while Instagram and Flickr focused on sharing photos, not text. At their core, however, all of these services center around the same thing: publish yourself.

Every digital service is centered around two types of interactions: publishing content and rating content. On Facebook you update your status and like a picture of your high school buddy’s cat; on Google Plus you share a YouTube video and +1 your favorite Android app; on Twitter you tweet about whatever mundane activity you’re participating in and retweet that Justin Bieber likes cereal for breakfast; on Foursquare you check in to maintain mayorship of your own house and leave a tip at your local gym; on Instagram you post a picture of your lunch and double tap to like a friend’s image that they filtered to look like it had been recovered from Egypt after the seven plagues; on Path you share what music you’re listening to and laugh at a friend’s story; on App.net you wish more people were there. The list goes on and on.

There are at least three questions I think we should consider when we evaluate this system of publishing and rating. First, is what you’re about to publish more valuable if it is on a social network, or would it be just as valuable if shared personally (in person, via text, through email, etc.)? Second, does the content you publish become more valuable if others rate it (and conversely less valuable if others do not rate it)? Third, are ratings of your content on a social network valuable?

This year after we finished setting up the Christmas tree at my mother and father-in-law’s house we took a family photo. I posted the picture on Instagram and received a number of likes. The following day, my sister-in-law (who is sixteen) reposted my picture and has triple the number of likes that mine has. I got value out of sharing that picture because family and friends were able to see it, but it would have been just as valuable for me if it had not been shared. It’s one of the few pictures I have of our three families together and it represents a milestone in my life (my first Christmas as an official part of the family). The content did not become more valuable for me because of the likes that it did or did not receive. For my sister-in-law, however, that picture gained value with the number of likes it received. For her it was less valuable if it was not shared. It isn’t that she doesn’t appreciate that moment like I do, but rather that sharing that moment made it more valuable for her.

The economy of social networks is tricky. Should I feel less important or popular or valuable if I have fewer followers on Twitter than another or if no one retweets my awesome joke? Should I choose to post something based on whether or not I think it will receive likes? Am I part of a social network just to glorify myself and encourage others to like my content so I can feel good about who I am? Is that the kind of person that I want to be?

These may seem like too deep of questions to ask in response to social networking, but the reality is that social networks have become an integral part of who we are. Many of us have either consciously or subconsciously learned to value publishing content for the sake of ratings. Sharing about yourself is not in and of itself bad and it isn’t wrong for you to feel good about yourself if someone double taps your Instagram picture.

I’m not a Luddite lobbyist or a hipster who owns dozens of LPs but no record player. I value technology and social networking, but I also recognize that publishing in and of itself isn’t valuable. Even if dozens or hundreds of people like something I post, that doesn’t mean it is objectively valuable, and even more importantly that shouldn’t mean that it is more subjectively valuable to me.

Personally, I’m still muddling through these questions and trying to understand why I publish what I do. I’m beginning to ask myself if things are more or less valuable if I post them, etc. I don’t know if I’m becoming a better or worse person because of social networking, but I want to be sure that I’m at least asking myself the right questions to start to discern that. While some things are certainly more valuable when shared, I’m trying to find a balance with the things that I share and to appreciate moments and ideas sans ratings. I’m learning that journaling helps filter out the urge to publish and trying to remember that ratings on social networks truly should not alter my behavior or self-esteem. Just because something is published does not mean it is more valuable.

Likes, Retweets, Double Taps and Smiley Faces: The Economy of Social Networks [Off Topic] is a post from: Droid Life

Like many in my generation, I started listening to music on CDs. I used to sit in a rocking chair with my “skip free” portable CD player (I can’t remember if it was a Walkman or not) listening to Now 4 or No Doubt. Around the age of 16 or 17 I was given my first iPod: a 30 GB 5th generation iPod Classic (although at that point it wasn’t called “Classic”). I can vividly remember sitting down at my computer and slowly importing dozens of CDs into iTunes and syncing my iPod. I remember when Tri-tone meant that my CD had been imported, not that I had a new message. I began buying music straight from iTunes instead of visiting the then large, now non-existent CD section at my local Best Buy.

Eventually my iPod was stolen. I looked at cheaper iPod knockoffs, but since my car didn’t have an auxiliary port I was still fairly reliant on CDs. At the time, any music I had purchased through iTunes was copy protected. I contemplated burning CDs of my albums to get rid of the DRM, but I wasn’t convinced of a solution yet. I could store music on my SD card, but that was limited in storage. To make matters worse, more and more devices were being released without an SD card slot. That left physical syncing, which was on option, but at that point why not get an iPod for music?

I eventually began to look into services like Spotify and rdio. I wanted to use a subscription service because I was tried of buying music from Amazon and iTunes and trying to organize and sync everything. On top of that, I had old tracks from iTunes that were still laden with DRM and were therefore unplayable on non-Apple devices. Subscription services cost $10 per month for streaming and offline caching so it seemed like a win-win situation. I could have most of my music library available on any device for a low monthly fee and never have to worry about synching album purchases or whether or not certain albums are playable on certain devices.

I received one of the rare Spotify accounts that does not require a Facebook sign in from a contest. At the time I wasn’t interested in the solution because I didn’t want to stream music on my phone all the time. Once I did a little more digging and discovered music caching options I began to think about a subscription service much more seriously. I didn’t care for the look of Spotify, but even more importantly, it was beginning to seem like everyone and their mom (literally) was using the service on Facebook. I don’t like being coerced into using Facebook and I’m much more hesitant to support services that support such behavior. Most important of all, however, was Spotify’s lack of music options. While Spotify’s album selection continues to improve, when I was first looking at it, the service lacked many of my favorite albums.

Shortly thereafter I began to use rdio. I really liked the app (especially compared to what Spotify calls an app) and rdio’s library had about 95% of the albums I listened to regularly. The app had a consistent interface on both iOS and Android (while Windows Phone’s app remained frustratingly buggy) and while I missed the gapless playback I had become accustomed to, it provided the cloud-based music ecosystem that I had been longing for. When a new album would come out I would open rdio on my phone or computer and tell it to sync the album to my phone to listen to offline. Sure, every now and then I would get the hankering to listen to The Jakes’ EP or Childish Gambino’s EP and be forced into the stock music app, but overall rido had the library, app, and ecosystem that I wanted.

After much hand wringing I spent 4 or 5 hours last week cleaning up my iTunes library, buying tracks that had come out since I joined rdio, and setting up iTunes Match/Google Music. While I was deeply in love with rdio and the dream of cloud-based music, I caved into the iTunes Match/Google Music solution because several album labels are still refusing to release their music on streaming services until several months after release while others are refusing to put content on streaming services at all. Those holes in streaming services libraries can be filled in with stock music apps, but maintaining two separate libraries is a nightmare. Sure, I can set up Spotify to sync both my local library and my cloud library, but that means maintaining multiple libraries and doesn’t deal with DRM issues.

The solution for me was to pay for iTunes Match. I already had a lot of music that I had purchased through iTunes that I would like DRM free and iTunes often has exclusive tracks for albums. $25 and a few hours later I have the same library that I had with rdio, but I can play literally any song I want on any device. I don’t have to maintain multiple libraries and I don’t have to wonder if an album I want is available to me; I just go download it.

I wanted to believe that streaming services were the future of music, but the reality is that services like Spotify and rdio have limited libraries. Until someone can offer me a streaming service that lets me stream every track out there and upload my own personal tracks for streaming, I’m going to stick with iTunes Match/Google Music. Despite the increased expense of paying for albums more often and the heavy initial time investment, iTunes Match/Google Music provides a vastly superior experience. While we have the technology to provide the best music experience, issues like paying artists a fair amount for their work and getting all of the content out there onto any device continue to plague subscription services.

The Nightmare of Maintaining Your Music Library [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

Ever since the original Kindle Fire was released last year there has been some controversy about whether or not to consider Amazon’s tablets to be Android tablets. While Amazon has always admitted that the products run a forked version of Android and Android apps, the Android community was quick to distance themselves from the product despite its record sales. While Amazon likes to talk about Fire apps and doesn’t talk about the version of Android running underneath the Fire interface in any of their official documentation, I believe the Kindle Fire should be considered an Android tablet.

The first reason the Kindle Fires should be considered Android tablets is that they run Android. This may seem a bit obvious, but hear me out. Many Android enthusiasts want to discount the Fire because the interface it runs is so wildly different than stock Android. Since the interface on HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Sony products are also very different from stock Android, should we not consider them Android? Did anyone ever accuse the Nook of not being an Android tablet? Yes, the Fires run a forked version of Android, but it is still Android.

The second reason that the Kindle Fires should be considered Android tablets is that they run Android apps. While the Kindle Fire lacks access to the Play Store, every Fire that has been released has been rooted and therefore able to install the Play Store. Even if a Fire isn’t rooted, every app that is available in Amazon’s Appstore is an Android app.

The argument might be made that Linux can run Windows applications with Wine, but no one would call Linux Windows. While that is true, no one would say that the applications that come preloaded with Ubuntu, a more popular Linux distribution, are Windows applications. Perhaps most importantly, applications designed for Linux don’t run on Windows machines without a virtual machine to run Linux on top of Windows. Applications that run on the Kindle Fire will run on other Android tablets and vice versa. The Linux/Windows comparison is clever, but ultimately inaccurate.

The third, and certainly most meta reason, to consider the Kindle Fires to be Android tablets is that Amazon is to date the most successful Android tablet manufacturer. As of the time of this writing Google has not released sales or activation numbers for the Nexus 7. While I hope it has out-performed the Fires, at this point the only numbers we have are that the Fire has 22% of the tablet market. That is a huge chunk of the market when you remember that Apple has 68%. About 1 out of every 5 tablet owners have a Kindle Fire based on the latest numbers we have. As difficult as it may be to admit, the Kindle Fire did what no other Android tablet maker was able to do: gain significant market share in the market.

I think a lot of Android enthusiasts’ antagonism towards the Kindle Fire stems from two issues: Amazon has changed the way that Android looks and works on the Fire, and Amazon was successful. It didn’t bother anyone to call the Nook Color and Nook Tablet Android tablets because they came before Honeycomb was released (and shortly after the original Galaxy Tab was released). When Amazon was successful with a forked version of Android while other tablets like the Xoom and Galaxy Tab failed in the market, I think many Android enthusiasts turned against Amazon. We know how powerful and useful Android is, but the only products that have been successful in the market have been Amazon’s forked version. That is not the Android we want to see succeed, so we want to discount the Fire.

I really want Google to succeed in the tablet space, but I have to admit that Amazon got there first. Hopefully Google has been able to play catch up with the Nexus 7 and will be able to compete with the Fire HDs, iPad, and Surface with the rumored Nexus 10. Even though I want Google to do better than Amazon, however, I have to admit that Amazon beat Google to the punch and was successful in the market with an Android tablet before anyone else. We may not like what Amazon is doing with Android, but that doesn’t mean the Fires aren’t Android tablets.

Three Reasons Why the Kindle Fires Should Be Considered Android Tablets [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

Over the past few years there has been grumbling among some that Google needs to stop calling Android open source. The argument is a simple one: Google can call Android open source as long as it doesn’t place any requirements on its OEMs to use Android. This article will unpack some of the misconceptions about what it means to say that Android is open source and deal with the two major instances where Google has been accused of violating its own principles concerning Android. 

First and foremost, what does it mean to say that Android is open source? That means that Android is available for anyone and everyone to download and use however they please. If a manufacturer wants to put Android on a piece of hardware, they are free to do so without having to pay a dime. Anyone can download Android and do whatever they want with it. The source code for Android is published so anyone can use Android in any way they like.

Google released Android as an open source platform because Google believes that being open enables all sorts of innovations that you often don’t see on closed platforms. Being open means that Android isn’t limited for use only on devices that Google blesses. Unlike iOS, which only runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, Android runs on all sorts of form factors from phones to tablets to multimedia devices to robots.

While Android is open source and available for everyone to use, the Google Play store and Google apps (Gmail, Google Calendar, Chrome, etc.) are only available to Google’s partners in the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) that are certified by the Android Compatibility Program (ACP). It is free for anyone to join the alliance, but in doing so the company must agree to not fork Android and instead strive to avoid fragmentation of the Android platform. What this means is that a manufacturer like Acer cannot release a device that runs a non-compatible version of Android. If Acer wants to release a device with a non-compatible version of Android they can, but they’ll have to leave the OHA and lose access to Google’s ecosystem.

Restricting access to Google’s apps and ecosystem does not mean that Android is no longer open source. Anyone can download and use Android however they want, but to be a part of Google’s larger ecosystem, manufacturers have to play by Google’s rules. This is important: there is a difference between Android and Google’s apps; the former is open source, the latter is closed source. Android and Google’s apps are mutually exclusive – Google will let anyone use Android, but not just anyone can use Google’s apps or have access to their ecosystem.

The first time that Google appeared to be overstepping its bounds in terms of Android being open sourced was with Motorola’s attempted use of Skyhook in 2010. If you don’t remember, Skyhook Wireless is a location services company that uses WiFi positioning instead of GPS to give mobile devices location data. Motorola was planning on using Skyhook instead of Google’s location services in the Droid X back in 2010, but Google refused to certify the device with Skyhook’s location services. Google’s reasoning for refusing certification is that the way that Skyhook integrates its data with Google’s would contaminate Google’s location data. Because location data is critical to Android’s success (just ask Apple how their new Maps app has affected their reputation), Google refused to certify the Droid X. Was Google in the wrong for doing this? I’m not an expert in location services, but if there was a possibility that Skyhook’s data could have interfered with Google’s (which Google claims was the case) then I think Google was in the right.

The second major instance occurred just a few weeks ago when Acer announced that they would be releasing a device running Aliyun, but then quickly canceled the press event after Google spoke up. According to Google, Aliyun is a fork of Android, so Acer cannot release a device running the operating system and still be a part of the Open Handset Alliance. While this move was panned by critics who accused Google of betraying their open source principles, the reality of the situation is that Acer made a choice. At any point Acer can leave the OHA and make devices running Android without Google’s ecosystem or forks of Android. Google isn’t forcing Acer to do anything. Acer made the decision to be a part of the OHA and keep Android free from fragmentation. Acer is free to pull an Amazon and create their own ecosystem if they want to.

Despite what the critics say, Android is still and always has been open source. The key to understanding the hubbub is to understand the difference between Android and Google’s apps. Most of the misunderstanding about whether or not Android is actually open source seems to stem from the idea that Google wants to control Android more than they’re letting on. While I wish that were the case, the evidence indicates that Google is happy to keep Android open for anyone to use. Even though one could make a very compelling case that OEM skins have detrimental impact on Android compatibility, Google has done nothing to date to stop OEMs from customizing how Android looks and behaves while still having access to Google’s ecosystem of apps and content. Open has nothing to do with when updates are released or the terms to use Google’s closed source services and apps. Until Google stops releasing source code for Android, the argument that it is “clopen” or that Google restricts who can use it is just plain wrong.

Understanding the Difference Between AOSP and the Open Handset Alliance [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

Back in January of this year I reviewed the state of Android manufacturers up to that point. In January Samsung was the only major Android OEM that was making any money on Android phones. HTC had posted its first quarterly profit decline in two years while Motorola continued its financial decline amidst regulatory approval of Google’s then-proposed, now-approved purchase of the manufacturer. How is the ecosystem doing nine months into the year?

This is the year that Google was supposed to double down on tablets. That promise, made way back in March, was fulfilled in some ways by the Nexus 7. Instead of going head to head with Apple or preparing for Microsoft’s entry into the consumer tablet space with Surface, Google pointed their efforts at fighting back against the Kindle Fire. While the iPad has continued to dominate the market, the only other tablet to show any sizable adoption (aside from the TouchPad) has been the Kindle Fire. Amazon claims (without any sales numbers) that the Kindle Fire has 22% of the tablet market while Apple claims that the iPad has 68% of the market, leaving 10% remaining for Nexus 7, TouchPad, Galaxy Tab, Xyboard, Flyer owners.

While Google is expected to sell 8 million Nexus 7s by the end of the year (compared to around 5.5 million Kindle Fire sales), Amazon just launched a refreshed Kindle Fire and two Kindle Fire HD models. When shoppers visit Amazon.com to get holiday shopping done, they won’t be presented with a Nexus 7, but a Kindle Fire HD. Hopefully Google will be able to push Nexus 7 sales, but even if they’re able to match Amazon’s sales they’ll have done nothing to counter sales of Apple’s iPad. Add in the possible success of Microsoft’s Surface (or a number of other OEM’s Windows 8 offerings) and Apple’s expected entry into the 7-inch tablet space and Google will still be facing an uphill battle. While Amazon may be getting Android into the hands of users, Google can’t be happy that Amazon’s version of Android has been winning in the marketplace instead of theirs.

The Nexus 7 hasn’t been Google’s only move to control their version of Android. Google recently forced Acer to cancel the announcement of a device running Aliyun, a forked version of Android, because doing so would violate the terms of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). Members of the Open Handset Alliance have agreed to not ship non-compatible Android devices, instead trying to build a unified, compatible Android ecosystem. To be clear, Acer can leave the OHA at any time to pursue Aliyun development, but if Acer wants to keep shipping devices with access to Google’s apps and ecosystem then they can only ship devices with compatible versions of Android.

Shortly before Samsung’s unsurprising loss to Apple in this year’s (maybe this decade’s) biggest mobile lawsuit, Motorola filed a new patent lawsuit against Apple. While Motorola and Google were originally scheduled to go to court back in June, Judge Posner threw the case out because neither Motorola or Apple could identify the damages they had suffered from each other’s infringement. Motorola is arguing that all of Apple’s devices (save the then unannounced iPhone 5) have violated some seven of Motorola’s patents. While Google has promised to only use patents in defense of Android, this move seems unequivocally offensive in nature. So far Google has avoided a lawsuit directly with Apple, but Google’s purchase of Motorola and subsequent filing against Apple opens up the door to more direct litigation between the developers of the world’s top two mobile operating systems. Apparently Google has decided that the best way for them to defend Android in the court room is to litigate against Apple directly instead of using OEMs like HTC to fight its battles for it. While I would prefer to see cross-licensing agreements between Apple and Google, it seems as though these lawsuits will be going on for years.

So what has really changed in the last nine months? Samsung is still the largest Android OEM with HTC struggling to keep up with sales and Motorola rereleasing last year’s phones. Meanwhile, lower tier Android OEMs like LG are releasing bricks. Amazon is still dominating a tablet market that Google has failed to enter successfully. The release of the Nexus 7, despite being superior to the refreshed Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD, appears to be too little, too late. Google is still struggling to regain control of their ecosystem while partners like HTC run to Microsoft to try to get some sales in the US and Ice Cream Sandwich slowly rolls out to more devices in the wake of Jellybean. Android is still a huge force in the phone marketplace, but it seems more and more likely that Samsung and Motorola (Google) will be the only real players in time.

The mobile space is still very young; as Merlin Mann is fond of saying, every day someone is born who hasn’t seen the Flintstones. AT&T and Verizon are just now reaching the point where 50% of their customers have smartphones; even fewer people have tablets. Like every industry, however, not everyone can win. Android may end up being a major player in the tablet space, but it may end up being Amazon’s version of Android if Google doesn’t step up their game against the iPad. Android is still a resounding success in mobile both in the US and worldwide, but Google’s OEM’s can’t all succeed with Android. We can expect the mobile space to continue to shift and change over the next few years as some companies that were nothing become household names while other once powerful companies fall by the wayside. Android still has plenty of room to grow and improve and plenty of time to compete with Apple in the tablet space, but there are no assurances that companies like HTC will still be a major player in the Android ecosystem or that Google will control Android on tablets.

The State of Android [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

After today’s announcements I got to spend a little time playing with the new 7 inch Kindle Fire HD. Amazon has upped their game by releasing an updating Kindle Fire, and more importantly, two Kindle Fire HDs. Read on for my first impressions of the Kindle Fire HD.

While Amazon says they’ve made some major improvements to the Kindle Fire, I didn’t see a lot of improvements in the UI or the response time. The UI itself is almost identical to the original Fire, including the consistent presence of lag from the home screen. Jumping between sections like Books or Videos takes a few seconds, making the overall experience feel cheap. It’s possible that the 8.9 inch version of the Kindle Fire HD will perform better, but there isn’t much of a difference between the processors in each model (the 7 inch model runs the TI OMAP 4460 while the 8.9 inch model runs the 4470).

One big improvement over the previous Kindle Fire is the screen. Bezos wasn’t exaggerating when he noted the crispness and clarity of the display. While there was a noticeable amount of glare, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a tablet device.

According to Amazon Kindle Vice President Dave Limp, the Fire HD lineup is running a heavily customized version of Android 4.o. While he didn’t mention specific numbers, Limp confirmed that Amazon does indeed make a profit on Kindle hardware (though that profit must be minuscule).

Amazon made it clear in the event today that they’re competing with Apple now with the Kindle Fire HD. This is a big step for Amazon. Competing in the low end doesn’t carry nearly as many risks as competing in the high end, something Google and its partners have learned the hard way. It’s possible that Amazon will be able to take more of the tablet market with their low price points and the attractive new data plan, but that sort of achievement will probably require a much better performing device than the one I saw today.

Seven Inch Kindle Fire HD: First Impressions is a post from: Droid Life